Theatre review: Our Town

Our Town is American theatre's archetypal metatheatrical play, and for anyone not sure what that means Ellen McDougall's staging provides a pretty strong hint: Rosie Elnile's set puts a miniature version of the Open Air Theatre's seating banks on the stage, reflecting the audience's place back at them. It's an inspired setting for a story that's so much about people sitting back and observing life, although that significance isn't revealed until late. For the first two acts Thornton Wilder's play is pointedly about the everyday as it follows life in the 1900s and early 1910s in Grover's Corners, New Hampshire. In particular two families - that of Dr (Karl Collins) and Mrs Gibbs (Pandora Colin) and their next-door neighbours, local newspaper editor Mr Webb (Tom Edden) and his wife (Thusitha Jayasundera.) Narrated by the Stage Manager (Laura Rogers,) the first act follows a decidedly ordinary day.

The second act is "Love and Marriage," which takes us a few years down the line to the families' children George Gibbs (Arthur Hughes) and Emily Webb (Francesca Henry) getting married.

McDougall's production plays with the way Wilder explicitly sets the play in a theatre, and while the fact that it's pointedly colour- and disability-blind is probably more a reflection of the values theatre is increasingly embracing, rather than a specific artistic decision, it does mean the play's universality is highlighted. Despite its hokey feel there's a lack of sentimentality to Wilder's script - written a few decades after the events it portrays, the Stage Manager's introduction of some of the characters casually throws in how and when they went on to die. The production adds the odd foreshadowing touch of its own, like the play's tragic alcoholic choirmaster Simon Stimson (Peter Hobday) necking a glass of house white from the audience while asking a question about the town's drinking habits.

In a way it's obvious why the Open Air Theatre would want to stage this play as, sitting in the middle of Regent's Park, the honking flocks of geese, pigeons landing on the stage and drunks singing in the street that regularly interrupt the performance absolutely bring the real, everyday world into the experience. On the other hand another facet of the theatre makes it totally wrong for Our Town, namely the fact that it's massive: A vast auditorium and open spaces means there's no intimacy, so despite some lovely performances it's hard to really feel like we've connected to the characters.

It's also a play that relies heavily on a wonderful final act, which takes us to the cemetery and the realisation of how little anyone has actually been appreciating their lives in the preceding scenes. The hokeyness of the first two acts may be a rather sly way of lowering the audience's defences but if you don't know that you might find it dated and, as quite a few seemed to tonight, give up at the interval, which is a shame. I have a strong personal connection to Our Town, having played the Stage Manager in a school production (so I can sympathise with Laura Rogers' inability to say "Massachusetts" - and I wasn't even attempting the accent.) So I'll always have an emotional response to it regardless, but while this is a charming production it doesn't pull the rug out from under you in the way the play is capable of.

Our Town by Thornton Wilder is booking until the 8th of June at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Johan Persson.