Mary Panttaja

We saw a production of “Our Town” by Thorton Wilder. Weirdly, it wasn’t until this morning that I really “got” what Wilder is pointing to—I must admit I am really slow about this realization. Even the structure and tenor of the play reflects the authors intentions. The whole thing produces a sense of disquiet (’I don’t get it’, sort of thing.)

It’s not that small town life is quaint and all the details are interesting—it’s that the people of that town weren’t really living or engaged in life but had somehow settled into their roles and minutia. No one was really looking. A few people noticed some things—the moon in all it’s glory one evening for example. They see a glimmer of life around them occasionally, but normally focus on the hard facts of their lives.

The play gets dismissed as being to quaint—but that is the point, they are living their idea of quaint. Of course, intellectually I could have told you that deceased Emily’s speech in the last act was the theme of the play—that they were not paying attention to their lives and they didn’t know it. But today I really get a sense of it. The thing that tripped me into this realization was that the characters aren’t engaged with each other in any real sense. They talk about the sorrows and troubles of the town drunk (played by Donohoe), but no one ever even speaks with him. Everyone talks about wanting to see what will happen to him naively assuming that they have no part in the evolution of the story. It’s not their role as written in the quaintness of their lives. And, of course, they are not bad sorts, just ignorant of the wealth of true possibilities. The subtlety of Wilder’s presentation is that we’re not quite sure why we are not very engaged with these characters for they seem of a normal sort. Just like us; maybe even less interesting than we are.
PS. Dan Danohoe played the town drunk with which he did wonderfully expressive things with the few scenes he was given. Anthony Heald was the Stage Manager and was equally wonderful—though the part is a little less interesting to me.