Yet another revival of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” has opened on Broadway. It’s a genuine classic: my late, lamented theater company devoted to classic American plays never produced it in 20 years because we were restricted to “forgotten and under-performed” shows, and though it has been 86 years since its debut, “Our Town” remains a standard part of the American repertory in colleges, community theaters and professional theaters.
Although the play is about life , love and death in a turn of the century New England town, the new production is multi-racial, indeed contriving a bi-racial romance, which was about as likely in 1901 New England as the arrival of a herd of centaurs. There are other aggressive updates to make the play “relevant” as well: anachronistic costumes, the suggestion of an interfaith wedding (more likely in the real setting of the play than centaurs, but not by much) with Freya Ridings 2017 hit “Lost Without You” being sung during that wedding. Regular readers here know my standard for assessing such directorial intrusions: if it works, it’s fine. However, I also recall an old theater mentor whose mantra was, “When presenting a classic, make sure that it will be appropriate for an audience member seeing it for the first time, and one who will see it for the last time.” These riffs by director Kenny Leon sound like the inspiration of someone who has seen “Our Town” too many times, but then, to be fair, I haven’t seen this production. The Times reviewer certainly liked it, [That’s a gift link!] but whether this was because of its wokeness or its genuine value as live theater only he could say.
Ethics Alarms 