Silly Little Country

Soulpepper's 'Our Town'

Somehow I have eluded this play for my many years; I initially dodged it by my choice of high school and years of attendance there (surely one of the only ones then that did not stage it - had they I would have been needed for some role), and probably avoided it through much of my life because I had decided from what snatches I saw was that it is a sappy portrayal of small-town New England life at the turn of the century.
Soulpepper mounted a production last year that earned remarkable critical reviews, and it also featured Martha MacIsaac, whom I really loved as Hedwig in their previous 'Wild Duck'. And it also featured many other company members who have performed superbly in their previous productions. But schedules were cruel and I did not see it in 2006.
Kindly, the company re-mounted the production this year!
Let me start by saying this play is not at all what I expected. The first act draws one into the notion of the small-town idyll, but little barbs keep coming up; the paperboy has an illustrious youth and ends up killed in France some years later (yes there is very much playing with time), the Polish immigrants who moved to the town are featured in the discussion of town life by their exclusion from most of town life (except giving birth!), we are told that Mrs Gibbs will die early of pneumonia, and especially for me, the 'sweet' young girl Emily who is the centre of the play is portrayed as having what could only be described as a completely instrumental interest in how pretty she is, a funny edge that hangs through a nice scene in which she asks her mother about her attractiveness, and her mother's. And she clearly sees herself as Queen Bee of her school. So on the surface it could seem a sort of Norman Rockwell scene, there are odd portents, and small things that do not quite fit. (To be fair to Norman Rockwell, he got that sort of stuff in too.)
In the end the first act gives us a sort of odd portrait of daily life in this small town of 2500 people or so; I enjoyed that portrait, having grown up in a town of around 1000 (not in New England). What Wilder conveys so beautifully is how much everyone knows about everyone, and the arbitrary ways in which they intervene at times, and also stand back from interference. He is right about how much work the mothers do, and this was still largely true in my childhood. And Dr. Gibbs is a pretty good 'Father Knows Best' father, but it is clear Wilder is not suggesting this is typical. And maybe Emily's self-conception reflects a bit the pressure in small communities to have everyone nicely categorized.
The second act focuses on marriage. This was fascinating; Wilder does not even let us extrapolate form what might have seemed idyllic in the first act to letting us view this act as an idyll. If anything it is like watching an insect-eating plant close on its two protagonists, George and Emily, and it spreads the agony around, allowing most of the parents of the bride and groom to express their pain. And yet, and yet. The text asks us to realize that there is a reason for all this. It was delightfully ambiguous.
This was all lovely. But that third act! I cannot recall its like. I pretty much had no idea where it was going, from when it started with the dead seated on stage, right through to Emily returning to her birthday party, and the at first surprising horror she experiences in the process. But in the end it was a brilliant and heart-rending way to say one of the key things he wanted to say; appreciate the opportunity to live! And try to appreciate it deeply.
I was exhausted when I went into the theatre and worried about staying awake. Remaining alert was no problem. The staging was also a great tool for keeping interest alive. It is clear from the opening line that Wilder intended to break the standard suspension of disbelief right away, of course restoring it at will as things went on. I do not know what stage directions are in his text, but this production certainly chose a fairly abstract way to present action on the stage; at least one line of text in the play suggested strongly this made a lot of sense. I very much liked it.
As for the acting; nobody felt wrong to me (this is so typical with Soulpepper). I'd readily single out Albert Schultz, who appeared to be having a lot of fun playing the stage manager, and newly svelte after his recent appearances on TV as Conrad Black, and on stage as Mack the Knife as Conrad Black. Nancy Palk and Jane Spidell were excellent as the mothers, and Oliver Dennis and John Jarvis as the fathers. And I quite liked Jeff Lillico, but I will confess, that in much the way she carried 'The Wild Duck', with a rather goofy, open-eyed innocence, Martha MacIsaac contributed so much to the play with ability to sell that innocence, and of course in the end to have it compromised. IMDB tells me she is 22 now, but the friends I attended with and I all thought she looked about 12 when she came on stage, not so far off, actually, for her job in this role. She kept me spellbound.
I am planning to see this production again very soon; how can one reach my age and have seen it only once? And I want to hear more of what I know Wilder has in there; I had no idea where he was heading, so in the scenes where characters talk about their small and great pleasures, the smell of the heliotropes, how the moon looks, I did not know which strings in me where being played. I want to experience it once more. And now have a plan in place to do so.
What a dummy! Not to have seen this play before. I will chase every future opportunity.
And it is worse. I read 'The Bridge of San Luis Rey' when I was young and recall nothing of it at all. Obviously too dumb and young to hear him. The local public library is getting a bunch of Thornton Wilder requests!
Thanks again Soulpepper, for making me see this. And thanks to Thornton WIlder - if he is sitting among the dead in the third act, I can only say I will try to be less blind.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 3:07 PM