Our Town

Though probably the most performed American play ever, Thorton Wilder’s 1938 masterpiece rarely gets a major professional production in Australia; which makes this almost-traditional, very moving Sydney Theatre Company staging worth travelling far to catch. Affirming life while facing the inevitability of death, Our Town urges us to celebrate even the smallest events of our daily life — so seeing a great play very well done must deserve special celebration.

Apart from one spectacular Third Act innovation, Iain Sinclair’s production sticks to Wilder’s theatrical rulebook: no sets, no props, lots of miming with imaginary cups and saucers, houses represented by chairs and ladders, and an always-onstage Stage Manager (Darren Gilshenan) as benevolently bossy stand-in for the playwright.

Even now, in 2010, this approach seems theatrically radical despite our long acquaintance with all things Brechtian and postmodern: imagine the shock it must have been for audiences in 1938. But the characters are so clear and warm, the writing so strong and the philosophical implications so challenging, Wilder’s magic still works.

Director Sinclair has added ‘Foley Artist’ to the program cast list. Lanky, smiling, long-haired Steve Toulmin crouches at the side supplying live sound effects for the mimed props. With audience-delighting precision, he rattles cups, clinks milk bottles, flops newspapers, blows passing train whistles and rings the town bells. Foley is a movie process that goes back to the first talkies: it’s highly unusual to find it on stage.

The town in Our Town is fictional, turn-of-the-century Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire. It’s small, decent and definitely ordinary. Wilder’s focus is on the Gibbs and the Webb families, next-door neighbours. Baseball-mad George Gibbs (Robin Goldsworthy) is shyly keen on academically clever Emily Webb (Maeve Dermody). They are sixteen in the first act; they court and marry two years later in the second; Emily dies having their second child before the third act begins. It is Wilder’s wonderful idea that Emily should then take her place in the local cemetery where she converses with other dead citizens, including Rebecca Gibbs, her mother-in-law.

“Human beings must realise life while they live it,” cries Emily, and she begs the Author/SM for a last return to one happy moment in her life, her 12th birthday. And it’s here, after two acts of plain black tabs, that director Sinclair gives his designer Pip Runciman permission to re-imagine Wilder. Bringing the full force of the STC’s 21st century set/lighting/sound technology to bear, Runciman suddenly presents a whole new dimension into which dead Emily intrudes. It’s both magical and horrific, a shattering half-alive, half-dead experience, and perfectly in keeping with the play’s serious intent.

The acting is strong and committed all round, with standout performances from Dermody as the time-travelling Emily, and from Ashley Cummings as the mother who wonders if perhaps there is something worth seeing beyond the tight, loving embrace of Grover’s Corners.

Frank Hatherley

Photo: Robin Goldsworthy, Darren Gilshenan, Josh Quong Tart, Maeve Dermody in Sydney Theatre Company’s Our Town. Photo by Brett Boardman.