In a small town

The recently opened Oregon Shakespeare Festival play "Our Town" is a wolf in sheep's clothing, so to speak. A play of dark complexity just beneath a patina of the seemingly ordinary.

But first the sheep's clothing: writer Thornton Wilder creates in Grover's Corners, N. H., the quintessential turn-of-the-century small town.

At first glance, meaning act one, it is pure Americana and ever so sweet. In fact, Wilder uses nostalgia as the play's fulcrum, relying on the audience's latent longing for a place of familiarity and simplicity.

Where anonymity has not encroached, where faces are recognizable, and everyone is greeted by name regardless of position or background and people are of good will, their intentions, if somewhat intrusive, never harmful. Where the tree-lined streets are quiet, the stars bright in the night sky, the air redolent of heliotropes and a dog can sleep all day in the middle of Main Street and not be bothered. Where milk is delivered every morning by Joe Crowell (Alexander Barnes) and his horse Bessie, and the news du jour, assembled by editor Webb (Richard Howard), is about a woman increasing the town's population by two. She gave birth to twins, it turns out, delivered by Doc Gibbs (Hassan El-Amin), local G.P., who makes house calls even in "Polish Town." Where the rhythms and routines of daily life, taken in with every breath, are familiar and reassuring.

Few of us have ever lived a life akin to the characters in Grover's Corners, never walked down a Main Street and found a dog sleeping on the single white line, and so Wilder intuits that with little literary effort he can ensnare the audience in his compelling fantasy. In the same way that any one of us can sit and gaze at a Norman Rockwell painting with longing and even regret, cognizant of the fact that our lives have never been touched by such people or such a place.

Wilder, like Rockwell, was a purveyor of intense nostalgia, proffering a fictionalized place and insisting that it is reality thereby creating a longing for a life no one has ever lived. So we stand ready to suspend our disbelief to the point that we search the horizon, and wonder if.

But what makes "Our Town" interesting is that behind the veneer of this benign, ordinary life — and it is, without exception, ordinary — Wilder takes literary license by introducing one crucial character, the Stage Manager (Anthony Heald), who breaks the fourth wall and makes the audience complicit.

The playwright doesn't simply lift the curtain, as it were, on a bucolic New England town as if he were singing a lullaby meant to soothe. Instead, he uses the Stage Manager to begin a clinical examination of Grover's Corners. A sociological dig, of sorts.

Hence, the set is not replete with gingerbread houses with inviting, well furnished interiors, but one that is, at best, stark. And it is the Stage Manager who offers an often biting critique (a velvet glove covering a mailed fist) of what can seem starchy, even narrow lives. Where children, such as Emily Webb (Mahira Kakkar), follow the template of their parents, often at the cost of their dreams. Or Simon Stimson (Dan Donohue), choir director and organist in the church, known for his excessive drinking, who longs for music to do more than blandly harmonize. And Mrs. Gibbs (Rachel Kaiser), holding a postcard of Paris close, imagines using her "legacy," derived from the sale of inherited furniture, to visit a place where English is not the first or the second language.

Even George Gibbs (Todd Bjurstrom), sweetheart to Emily, is nudged by the possibilities of a life beyond Grover's Corners, though he is unable to articulate his discontent or fearlessly consider what might be.

So the Stage Manager, with a smile and good cheer, covertly begins the process of deconstructing Grover's Corners, which begs the question whether "Our Town" is, in part, a satire, or a passive aggressive play that extolls the sleepy life of a small New England town while reminding the audience, often with laugh-out-loud humor, of a darker side of the human condition.

Wilder offers the audience an image of placid continuity, of multigenerational patterns, of tranquility, while simultaneously portraying these same people as risk adverse and fearful of their own desires for change.

It's an interesting ploy, one that is so convincing at the outset that the audience may be all too reluctant to abandon the seductive ideal of Grover's Corners.

There is also the possibility that Wilder's narrative, its timid language and reticent tone, is too tame for contemporary audiences, who might be less than interested in exploring the nuanced lives of turn-or-the-century, provincial folk.

"Our Town" has been called timeless. Universal in the themes it explores. But there is the possibility that while the audience has changed, the truncated inhabitants of Grover's Corners have not, and that may make all the difference in how this play is experienced.

The decision to stage "Our Town" in the outdoor theatre is interesting. Should a play that trades on a studied intimacy require a setting that encapsulates this intimacy?

The depth and breadth of the Elizabethan stage, with open sky and stadium seating, on occassion dilutes the drama. At other times, the dark night sky that stretches above is ideal, complimenting and enhancing certain scenes.

To be sure, the overall staging is brilliant as is the period costuming to include a dramatic final scene in monochromatic gray that is extraordinarily effective.

The actors, a strong ensemble, are, to a person, simply exceptional. But then, that is always OSF's signature.