Our Town

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

It’s a crime to the theatre Muse of Community Theatre that City/Stage affords the Evergreen Players only a four-week run. With all of the outstanding theatre productions currently playing in the Metro Denver area, it takes serious planning for Denver people to attend.

Whitney Nuchols as Emily Webb, Jeffrey Haas as George Gibbs, Bill Thompson as Mr. Webb and Cat Smith as Mrs. Webb in Evergreen Player’s production of Our Town. Photo by Ellen Nelson

With a cast of 32 actors, half of whom have never before been on stage, the Evergreen Players winds up their short run this weekend of Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Our Town, directed by Craig A. Bond.

Ironically, Our Town is perhaps the most frequently produced play by an American Playwright. Astonishing, still, the number of people who have never seen it. A favorite with community theatres, yet it is one of the most difficult to produce. Difficult because it takes place on a bare stage depending upon the Stage Manager’s narration to evoke striking audience imagination. Our Town solicits a great deal of pantomime, a skill extremely difficult for inexperienced actors.

Haley Johnson does a magnificent job as the Stage Manager. The use of her eyes reveals as much about the town of Grovers Corners, New Hampshire and the people, as do her words. Her tone of voice captures the spirit and warmth of the small town. A fictional town, Wilder actually based it on several New Hampshire towns between the years of 1901 and 1913.

The bare stage allows the audience to color the portrait outlined by the Stage Manager with shades of their own choosing. Hence Our Town turns into our town, becoming a personal experience for the audience in reality from person history, in imagination, or “wouldn’t it be nice to have lived there?” Undoubtedly, some of the reasons it continues ride the popularity wheel.

The charm and popularity of Our Town stands in juxtaposition to production. It is not an easy play to do by the actors or by the director.

Grovers Corners is a slow easygoing type of town where everyone knows everyone, and a horse drawn cart delivers milk. One of the problems producing this play is that the cast and crew tend to confuse slow easy going with the characters. When the characters move and speak slowly, energy drops. Dropped energy lulls the audience to sleep. This is a particular problem for the middle of Act I and II for the Evergreen Players.

The energy for Act III does pick up. In spite of the fact most of the actors are on stage, they accomplish an extremely difficult acting requirement. The dead people must sit perfectly still throughout the entire act. Sitting still for five minutes is no small trick, much less for an entire act. This means no nose rubbing, pushing hair out of the eyes, changing position, moving the feet, or wiggling toes. Stage flies love this play to tantalize and tease actors with flickering tickles.

In this production, this cast, experienced and inexperienced, did an exceptional job with their dead people. I watched closely for the tiniest tickle to erupt. It didn’t.

Act III did present one problem that could have been avoided had someone walked around the theatre checking visibility. One of the dead people ended up being blocked by the stage left curtain for people sitting on the right side of the stage. Only a foot and the corner of a dress could be seen. Hardly enough to identify the actor.

Our Town centers around two families: the Gibbs and the Webbs. Rob Holmes plays Doc Gibbs. His demeanor points in the direction of a small town compassionate doctor, although his pantomime leaves much to be desired. Donna Worley handles the pantomime with Mrs. Gibbs with exceptional authority preparing meals in the kitchen for her family with Jeffrey Haas playing George Gibbs, and Samantha Hansen playing his bratty sister, Samantha.

Next door live the Webbs with Bill Thompson as Mr. Webb, editor of the local newspaper. Thompson moves in the direction of an inquisitive businessman approach. Cat Smith handles the role of Mrs. Webb with distinct wife-like focus popular in the early 1900’s. Smith’s pantomime skills are simply exquisite. She spent serious time concentrating on what she was doing and how. It shows, keeping her family in line with Whitney Nichols as daughter, Emily, and Madeline Olsen as Wally, her little brother. Although Olsen appears uncomfortable in the first two acts, she does a magnificent job as one of the dead people in Act III. No small trick, and that can’t be emphasized enough.

It is clear there were no horse people in the crew or cast. Peter Burghart plays Howie Newsome delivering milk with his horse, Bessie. In leading the horse, Burghart holds his arm way above his head. That translates into Bessie standing at least 25 hands high. An impossibility. I use to show an American Saddlebred who stood 17 hands high, considered to be a very large horse. Even with Flame’s long graceful neck, I never had to raise my arm while leading him. That stuck out as a major, humorous distraction, and a sign of a serious lack of research.

So much can be done with and for new actors assisting them to capture characterizations besides costumes, lines and names. One of the most important lines in the entire play gets buried under a drab deadpan monotone reading.

Having died in childbirth, Emily gets to spend one day back on earth. She chooses her 12th Birthday, but cannot tolerate the experience for very long. Her mother, too busy with Birthday preparations, doesn’t take time to look at her. She returns to the cemetery with the realization “They don’t understand” how precious life is.

Willy Leslie who plays Simon Simpson, the church organists and the object of town gossip because of his drunkenness, reiterates those who live don’t understand the value of life. His lines, to be filled with empathetic compassion for Emily, are delivered as dead as his body, drowning out their significance.

The vintage costumes for this period piece, designed by Fran Gibson and Mary Spies, are magnificent fitting the time, the characters, and the actors. Would that as much time spent on costuming could have been spent on developing these wonderful characters. Simple questions imbedded in the minds of the actors of who are these people? How do they walk? How do they speak? How do they stand? would have carried them a long way.

The Evergreen Players have a lot going for them. It remains unfortunate this is the last weekend, and the run so short.