“Our Town” Expressively Conjures a Bygone Way of American Life

metroweekly.com:

Our Town (★★★★☆) at the Shakespeare Theatre expressively conjures an entire population and bygone way of American life.They were bygone days in 1938 when Thorton Wilder wrote his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, set just after the turn of the century in bucolic Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire.

Wilder directed in the text that the action should unfold on a bare stage, where the span of a life might be measured over the twelve years spent with the citizenry of this small town.Bustling underneath the sturdy, arching beams of set designer Wilson Chin’s wood-frame theater-within-a-theater, Paul’s excellent cast do evoke not just the tapestry of family ties and neighborly disputes in Grover’s Corners, but also a vibrant sense of the landscape.In their eyes, we can see the sunflowers and butternut trees, smell the sweet scent of heliotrope on a moonlit night.

Somehow, in the scenic sparseness, abetted by Philip Rosenberg’s precise lighting and John Gromada’s rich sound design, we’re transported to 1901, New England.Leading our travels is Holly Twyford as the all-seeing Stage Manager, delivered with dry wit and a firm hand in conducting the townspeople to their marks and through various scenes of their lives.

Here to provide context and comfort, the Stage Manager is treated as a reliable narrator and must gain the audience’s trust, which Twyford assuredly does without being ingratiating or folksy.To its credit, the production almost entirely avoids folksiness, with none of the performances condescending to these characters’ so-called simpler way of life or dated vernacular.Tenderly sentimental, but not mawkish, even when contemplating death, the overall presentation is modulated to fill the space but never loudly.The play is a vivid.