‘Our Town’ @ The Core Theatre
Photos by Kathleen McNamara
—Jan Farrington
EMILY: Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute? STAGE MANAGER: No. (Pause.) The saints and poets, maybe—they do some.
Thornton Wilder’s Our Town is a forgiving play. And by that, I don’t mean it’s soft or sentimental, not a bit. By “forgiving” I mean that it doesn’t take extraordinary dramatic skill to pull off a decent production onstage—just a good, plain dose of humanity.
At The Core Theater, that humanity infuses the company’s straightforward and heartfelt production, played (as Wilder insisted) on a bare stage, dressed up with a scattering of stars—floating down from the back wall of the theater, and across the floor to the toes of the audience. (Scenic painting is by Jim Finger.) Wilder intended the odd match-up: the plain everyday life of parents and kids, breakfast tables and gardens, set against the infinite and timeless presence of the stars.
Almost certainly there are more than a few people in its audience who’ve played a role in Our Town—at a school, a summer camp, a community theater. It’s been translated into many of the world’s languages, and by various guesstimates there’s an Our Town on stage somewhere in the world every day of every year.
And if his letters tell the truth of it, nobody was more surprised than Thornton Wilder to find his unusual play a monster hit. The day after the New York opening in 1938, he wrote to a friend: “Funny thing’s happened….”
Set in the early 1900s in the village of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, the play introduces us to this person and that, but focuses our attention on two families—the Webbs and the Gibbses—who live in houses side by side. Their children George and Emily grow up talking between their upstairs windows. They walk to school, share a soda, fall in love, marry. If you’re looking for car chases and shoot-em-ups, this isn’t the place.
Our Town asks us to see and understand the monumentality of all this quiet living—the beauty and grandeur of moments we live through and let go without a thought, mostly. What would you give to sit for a half-hour—or do the dishes with—someone you loved who’s long gone from this world?
Autumn McNamara anchors the production with a quiet but intense portrayal of the Stage Manager, who leads us through the story with “asides” about the town’s past and future, and the fates of some inhabitants. Carly Rogers, a newly minted SMU theater grad, is an engaging Emily; in her, we see all the smart, organized young women we’ve known who could have “done” more in the world, but chose to stay put and (literally) marry the boy next door. George (the boy in question, played by Trevor Powell) feels younger than Emily—but he has a plan for their lives together, and a good heart.
Both George’s parents (James Hansen Prince as Doc Gibbs and Kim Sheffield Hill as Mrs. Gibbs) and Emily’s (Jeff McIntosh as Editor Webb and Andra Laine Hunter as Mrs. Webb) give us the natural-feeling chemistry of the long (and mostly happily) married. The mothers chat easily, sharing secrets on a garden bench, and both fathers have occasion to give George a “talking to,” with amusing results.
An ensemble of other characters pass by in the streets, come to visit, gather for choir practice and weddings…and funerals. Joan Eppes is endearing and funny as Mrs. Soames, who can’t stop bubbling about the “perfectly lovely wedding” she’s attending. And Zeke Fayble is striking as bitter church organist Simon Simpson, whose despair and anger trouble us. Small-town life could be devastating for those who felt themselves on the outside.
All in all, a neatly done Our Town directed by The Core’s artistic director James Hansen Prince—and Wilder’s words hit us where we live, whether the version we’re watching is close to home or on Broadway. If you don’t at least shed one tear at that wedding, or as Emily re-visits her twelfth birthday…well then, I don’t know what to say.
WHEN: May 3-19, 2024
WHERE: 518 W. Arapaho Road, Richardson TX
WEB: thecoretheatre.org
