The Thornton Wilder classic Our Town has been commended for shying away from traditional theatrical plays, and Connecticut College’s production was no exception. While it is a play with little music and no props or formal scenery, the haunting storyline and exceptional student performances were enough to keep the audience entertained and intent throughout.
Our Town opens with a detailed explanation of Grover’s Corners by our narrator and stage manager, played by Liz Buxton ’13. She stays with us throughout the play, introducing the town where our characters mature.
It begins on a spring morning in 1901, where you are introduced to a typical morning in the Gibbs and Web households. You quickly see that they are classically modest families, where the fathers go to work, the mothers take care of the house, and the kids are sent to school. You meet the local milkman and postman as they make their rounds, listen to various small talk, and realize you are witnessing a completely average morning in Grover’s Corners. However, while there is no immediate dilemma or noticeable goal anyone is trying to reach, you can’t help but take an interest in the residents of the town. Their sense of familiarity with the town and each other stands out, and you find yourself wanting to know more about this chillingly ordinary lifestyle.
With the exception of two tables and a few chairs, there are no props to be found, but the characters’ power and emotions made me forget I was looking at a naked performance space. When Mrs. Gibbs, played by Sarah Rhodes ’12, was out gossiping with Mrs. Webb, played by Susanna Kavee ’11, I didn’t need to see the peas they were stringing in order to climb deeper into the performance. The dialogue and interaction between all characters was powerful enough to keep me interested.
It is a production that relies entirely on its actors, but our Camels delivered one hundred percent. Julian Gordon ’14 and Hailey Fyfe ’13 maintained a strong chemistry as George Gibbs and Emily Webb, exemplifying love in a delightful teenage manner. The small talk between Howie Newsome, played by Conor McCormick-Cavanagh ’14, and his customers gave me a further sense of the town, as each conversation revealed just how small the community was.
The production’s use of the entire room allowed me to get even closer to the residents of Grover’s Corners. The audience was aligned against the wall, and the performance took place right in front of us. For much of the production I felt like I was right there with these characters, observing their daily routine in the same living room or street corner.
While community and marriage are some concepts of the play, Our Town is not an uplifting production. The entire performance maintains a morbid foresight, and while it is not completely announced, the audience knows the story will not have a happy ending. However, the storyline’s chilling sense of routine and entrapment is exactly what I was hoping for. Our Town differed from traditional plays by featuring three acts with two intermissions. This changed the atmosphere completely between acts. Although there were no new characters, and the town remained the same, each act began with greater sense of despair than the one before it.
I walked out of Our Town thinking about just how thought provoking a performance it was. Wilder intended to make his audience realize the importance of living, but it was the impressive job of the actors that emphasized his point so well. The messages conveyed in the story were delivered concisely in Conn’s production of Our Town and made for a very entertaining night in Tansill Theater. •
