It is certainly time for a fresh look at “Our Town,” Thornton Wilder’s classic 1938 drama that clinically explores the essential human experience and mortality through the residents of a small New England community at the turn of the century.
In addition to the shared traumatic experience of the COVID pandemic, the ever-increasing challenges of modern life would seem to reflect author’s concern that people are too stressed and self-concerned to be able to appreciate the simple miracles of everyday existence.
People also often fail to appreciate the play itself, finding it to be dated and corny instead of theatrically experimental, emotionally uncompromising, and genuinely timeless. This is, of course, the result of being initially exposed to “Our Town” in high school in the form of required reading or underwhelming amateur productions. Having once been involved in such a production, I was blown away years later by the immediacy and directness of David Cromer’s groundbreaking 2009 Off-Broadway revival.
Although the Cromer production became the longest-running production of “Our Town” to date, it did not transfer to Broadway. Instead, the play has finally returned to Broadway (for the first time since a 2002 revival with Paul Newman) in a new production directed by the ever-busy Kenny Leon (“A Raisin in the Sun,” “A Soldier’s Play”) with a 28-member cast including Jim Parsons, Richard Thomas, Katie Holmes, Zoey Deutch, and Ephraim Sykes.
Leon (who describes in a program note how he conceived of the production during the early days of COVID in 2020) has created an “Our Town” that reflects both its original setting and contemporary America, with a diverse cast, a mix of period and modern costumes and performance styles, and a new opening consisting of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian prayers.
While the direction can often feel self-conscious, on the whole, this is an accessible, poignant, and gorgeously-designed production, running under two hours with no intermission.
Whereas the Cromer production was casual and, apart from one brilliant visual coup, minimalist, the Broadway revival contains a large arrangement of lanterns hovering above the audience to represent the stars, a wooden plank backdrop (which eventually and rises to reveal an eternal abyss for the graveyard scene), and church congregation-style onstage seating.
As the Stage Manager (who provides narration and commentary for the audience), Parsons shakes off the old-timer folksiness associated with the role. He is gentle, likable, and a bit excited and quirky.
Other standouts include Deutch as an assertive and urgent Emily Webb, Sykes as an especially sensitive George Gibbs, Billy Eugene Jones’ unexpectedly jocular Dr. Gibbs, and Julie Halston in a terrific cameo as an overly enthusiastic church lady.
Holmes also stands out, but only to the extent that you can’t help but wonder how she keeps getting cast in shows despite lacking basic stage-acting abilities.
Barrymore Theatre, 243 W. 47th St., ourtownbroadway.com. Through Jan. 19.
