Director Leah Lowe’s production of Our Town is ambitious in scope, featuring a somewhat excessive running time of 150 minutes with two disorienting ten-minute intermissions (something usually done with plays that are three hours), and an ensemble cast that gives us a nice glimpse of the theater department as a whole.
As a whole, the cast does a good collective job at portraying this small town. But I find the techniques of playwright Thornton Wilder to be disorienting and disengaging. Almost Brechtian in its alienation technique, the play attempts to show how much heart it has encompassing themes like love and death – but in essence, the core emotions are lacking from the script stage.
But my question is, why choose this play? I think the story was too melodramatic for this particular cast, and as a result, the production shows off its strengths along with its weaknesses, and with its weaknesses, we see Our Town’s reach occasionally exceed its grasp, which is not a dishonorable thing.
