[NoHo Arts District, CA] – A NoHo Arts theatre review of The Group Rep’s production of Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Our Town, directed by Mareli Mitchel-Shields and produced by Cynthia Payo and Tamir Yardenne.
I had never seen Our Town before. I knew a little about Thornton Wilder, having seen A Noise Within’s production of his play The Skin of Our Teeth last year. But I gathered Our Town is his opus and the most honored of his plays and novels. It won the Pulitzer Prize and several Tony Awards for various productions over the past eight decades since its first opening night. This incredibly moving play really earns its reputation. What a beautiful and sweetly American story it is.
For those of you not familiar with the play, it is set in the town of Grover Corners in upstate New Hampshire. A small town of a few thousand people. Just enough for one high school, a post office that shares its space with the sheriff’s office, a bank, a diner, a doctor’s office, a dairy, and a few stores, as well as many churches of various denominations.
It is a simple place, with charmingly simple people living their lives with few regrets and fewer still aggravations. Everyone knows everyone, and there are no secrets as it’s really not possible to have any in such a tight-knit community. All this openness leaves a space for peace, doesn’t it? With nothing to hide, nothing to dread, no one to distract from the everyday devotions like sleep and food and children and chores and the divinity those gifts can really bring.
We are escorted through this humble life by the stage manager who serves as narrator. He introduces all the characters and tells us about their lives, sharing details about them that only help us to love them even more than we could have done had we been left to our own devices. Like an angel of sorts, he brings us from scene to scene and life to life with a gentle repartee and an infectious humor as well as a deep love for them all.
There are marriages and losses, babies and friends for life, and the kind of ordinary revelations that remind us of our own singular existence. So many parallels to now, regardless of our more complicated and vastly more modern lives. Not much has changed at all, really since Our Town’s inception almost a century ago.
This is a gentle story of gentle lives. And its simplicity is deceptive in that you don’t notice how the story and these wonderfully funny, neighbourly folks find their way deep into your heart. So deep in fact that when the sadness comes, it feels utterly devastating. Confusingly so. Your throat tightens and your breath stops. It’s the writing, of course, and the strangely familiar construction of it all, with simple staging and a company of actors more than ready for the task.
I think The Group Rep was born to stage this play. They are a company of actors with deep roots in our community and a keen sense of responsibility to the art of theatre.
They deserve to be Our Town, in fact. In a place full of every kind of people, we need each other all the more and we absolutely need Our Town’s phenomenally poignant and universal message to remind us who we really are…
This is the best season for this show. But it is also the best decade for it. We need to remember how important our lives are. In every conceivable way. Every day. Every connection and every single moment spent together.
Our Town is about togetherness. In life and in death. It broke my heart and lifted me up at the same time. Miraculous. Perfect. Unforgettable. The Group Rep’s Our Town is pure poetry. They take this much-loved and widely honored play by Thornton Wilder and infuse it with their deeply creative spirit and their wonderful band of brilliant actors. Our Town is what our lives should aspire to be. It is a place full of the very best of us and this production is a marvel and a gift.
Tickets:
https://thegrouprep.com/show/our-town
When:
November 21-December 21
Fridays and Saturdays at 8PM
Saturdays and Sundays at 2PM
Where:
The Group Rep
10900 Burbank Blvd. NoHo Arts District, CA 91601
The Cast
The Group Rep cast features the talents of Casey Alcoser, Tom Allen, Fox Carney, Kathi Chaplar, Christina Conte, Jeff Dinnell, Noah Dittmer, Georges Patry, Cynthia Payo, Lloyd Pedersen, Faye Reynolds, Steve Rozic, Rob Schaumann, Lewis Snow, Daisy Staedler, Neil Thompson, Larry Toffler, Cathy Diane Tomlin, Dianne Travis and John C. Woodley.
The Team
The Our Town production team includes M. Mitchel-Shields (Set Design), Noemi Barrera (Lighting Design), Ramona Reeves (Costume Design), Kathi Chaplar (Music Director), Bojana Jelovac (Assistant to the Director), Denise Downer (Marketing), Nora Feldman (Public Relations), Art & Soul Design (Graphic Design), Doug Haverty (Artistic Council Liaison), Kristin Stancato (Webmaster & Online Marketing), Alex Salkin (Stage Manager), Jackie Shearn and Caitlin Mae Smith (Social Media), Doug Engalla (Promotional Video & Photography), and is produced for The Group Rep by Cynthia Payo and Tamir Yardenne.