It is our need for comfort and the trap of it.Īct Two, which takes place in 1904, is where Wilder depicts the tension between freedom and inevitability.

Watching it feels like sitting in front of a fire on a cold winter’s night with your parents and grandparents, looking through old photo albums. The townspeople carry out their roles as if their identities are governed by the limits of their station in life, from the local historian Professor Willard (Ipswich’s Doug Brendel) to milkman Howie Newsom (Riley Freedman) to town drunk Simon Stinson (Brian Doser) to Constable Warren (John McGhee) to busy-body gossip (Angela Rossi).Īct One of Our Town plays like the first 90 minutes of The Truman Show, where breaking routine or acting out of character could ruin EVERYTHING. In Act One, Wilder smothers the audience with small-town charm, folksy routines, and the chatty conversation about weather, time, and home cooking.

They are the Grover’s Corners version of JFK and Jackie Kennedy -Camelot, rural New Hampshire-style. Emily is the smartest girl in school and secretary-treasurer of her class. George is a high school baseball star and president of the senior class.

The Gibbs and Webbs are generational names in Grover’s Corners, and Our Town follows the pre-ordained lives of their progeny: George Gibbs (Ciaran Mohan as young George and John Manning as older George) and Emily Webb (Krista Flanagan as young Emily and Michaela Zullo as older Emily). Frank Gibbs (Danny Marks) and his wife, Julia (Ipswich’s Laurie Paskavitz), and town newspaper editor Charles Webb (Sean Westgate) and his wife, Myrtle (Kathleen Madden). Wilder’s omniscient Stage Manager (played by real-life sisters Anna, Elisabeth, and Lilia Thomas, who literally finish each other’s sentences) sets the stage by introducing the audience to the central characters of town: physician Dr. Set in the fictional town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire (population 3,149), the play opens in 1901 with a description of what could be the quaintest version of Anytown, USA. Playing to sell-out crowds in three of its four first shows, Our Town is reminding audiences how complicated - and yet simple - life can be no matter where or when you live.

Running from March 25 through April 3 at Stage 284 at the Community House in Hamilton, Our Town is just the theater’s second production since COVID closed virtually every stage on the planet in 2020. HAMILTON - As the world emerges from COVID’s two-year grip on our lives, theatergoers attending Stage 284’s current production of Thornton Wilder’s 1938 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Our Town are implored to remember one of life’s simplest lessons: “Open your eyes.”

Thornton wilder 1938