Director Joshua Peterson and his ensemble of talented actors and musicians bring Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, to Knoxville in their tender production of Thornton Wilder’s classic 1938 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Our Town. Considered by fellow playwright Edward Albee to be the greatest American play ever written, Our Town pulls at our heartstrings and reveals the beauty of small-town life and the importance of embracing life to its fullest.
Staying true to the metatheatrical aspects of the text, the set, designed by Christopher Pickart, is sparse and malleable; the only permanent fixtures are two small window panes hanging from the ceiling on either side of the stage, suggesting the boundaries of the Gibbs’ and Webb’s households. The actors themselves arrange and rearrange set elements; the town is built by those who live in it and love it. Much of the mimed action is punctuated by audio cues designed by Scott Baron and Jason Boardman, and the evening and night scenes are illuminated by a soft blue light and the twinkling of stars thanks to Angelyn Baer. Visually and sonically, the production is a romantic reminiscence of a time perhaps not so long-gone, or for a feeling we desire to experience in our current lives.
Our Town follows the lives of many residents of Grover’s Corners, and we are guided through its milieu by the charismatic narration of the Stage Manager, played by Drew Drake. The narrative is centered on the coming-of-age of two of its young residents—teenagers and neighbors Emily Webb and George Gibbs. Ella Trisler absolutely shines as Emily; her performance is moving and captures the profound tumult of hope, fear, and uncertainty that comes with growing up and falling in love. Brady Moldrup as George Gibbs is an endearing figure of hopeful and energetic youth, a boy on the brink of his transition into manhood and responsibility. Amber Collins Crane and Jan Willis, as Mrs. Webb and Mrs. Gibbs, are more than small-town mother hens; their concern for their daughters is surprisingly contemporary for an early 1900s small town and a result of their deft handling of the text. The Webb and Gibbs patriarchs, Robert Paterno and Steve Moldrup, are fatherly in their own unique ways, with Paterno bringing out Mr. Webb’s awkward bookishness and Moldrup emphasizing Dr. Gibbs’s firm but gentle relationship with his son George.
Even the secondary characters, including Jasmine R. Handy’s peace-keeping Constable Warren, Brady Craddock’s milkman Howie Newsome, Matt Stanley’s alcoholic choir director Simon Stimson, Kisha Rockett’s busybody Mrs. Soames (and her excellent whirlwind info-dump as Professor Willard!), layer the production with moments of tenderness and variety; small town life can be as multifaceted and complex as any city or metropolis. The littles show up in major ways as well, with Golden Littlejohn as both Si and Joe Crowell, Eli Peterson as Wally Webb, and Penny Peterson as Rebecca Gibbs, portraying the children’s experiences in Grover’s Corners.
Life in Our Town is a tapestry woven from experience, memory, grief, and hope. Each of the play’s three acts is separated by a short intermission beautifully accompanied by a live band playing from an elevated platform. Eric Sorrels, Adam Whipple, Amy Porter, Crystal Dougan, Colton Kirby, Cole Liles, J. Miller, and Michael Dodge set the mood with performances of country folk and folk gospel tunes for a rustic nostalgia for the simplicity of life. The music is flawlessly integrated into the production itself and lends a quaint cinematic quality to the experience.The actors themselves also contribute to the music as well, performing beautiful choral pieces in key moments of the narrative. Director Joshua Peterson pulls out all the sensory stops for this production; in the third act, when the deceased Emily relives her 12th birthday, Amber Collins Crane actually cooks bacon and eggs on a cast iron skillet. The aroma fills the theater and lends a powerful olfactory element to the painful nostalgia Emily feels in this moment.
Our Town runs at the Old City Performing Arts Center, located at 111 State Street, until September 29. Showtimes are Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 7:30pm, with one matinee on Wednesday, Sept. 18 at 10am and regular matinees on Sundays at 2:30pm. Tickets and info are available at https://www.simpletix.com/e/our-town-by-thornton-wilder-tickets-176931.
