Hubbard Hall Does Our Town

a review by Alex Brooks
The Theatre Company at Hubbard Hall has opened a new production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, directed by Allen McCullough and Randolyn Zinn. McCullough and Zinn have rounded up a fine mix of locals and New York actors in the usual Hubbard Hall tradition of mixing amateur, professional and everything in between. The result is a thoughtful and compelling production.
The play first opened on Broadway in 1938 and ran for nearly a year to much acclaim. It is one of the most frequently produced plays in the American repertoire, including a notable 1955 TV version starring Frank Sinatra and Paul Newman.
Some have knocked the play for not having enough action or drama or conflict and relying too much on nostalgia for an earlier and simpler small town America for its appeal. Others have found it compelling in its universality, its trenchant comment on the most basic human predicaments of growth, love, marriage and death. In this production, one starts sliding toward the former attitude in the first act, as the action revolves around such conflicts as a non-conformist church organist who drinks too much and inspires gossip and a son who fails to do his chores.  But in the second act, the courtship and marriage of the two main characters is very charmingly done by young actors Jim Staudt and Alexandra Jennings, and one begins to see the latter point of view. Their scene at a drug store soda fountain, in which they haltingly confess their feelings for each other, is a very fine piece of theater. And in the third act, one’s perspectives deepen in an extraordinary scene in which a panel of dead people comment on their own lives and those of the living, which is truly a profound sally of the imagination.
McCullough is an actor of real presence and certainly brings gravitas to the role of the stage manager, but for my money it’s a tough row to hoe. The Stage Manager was innovative, even revolutionary, when the play came out, breaking the “fourth wall” and speaking directly to the audience, but his role directing traffic, explaining background and offering philosophical soliloquies doesn’t quite add up to a real character. It is a difficult turn to keep lively.
There has been a revival of interest in the play in recent years, sparked probably by a much praised 2009 production at the Barrow Street Theatre in New York, directed by David Cromer. McCullough and Zinn acknowledge the inspiration of Cromer. The play was also done last season at the Williamstown Theatre Festival.
But whatever one may ultimately conclude about the play, it certainly has staying power, and modern audiences are still finding it gripping, a generation or two after it was written. A fine new production like this deserves a look – there is fine theater here and new perspectives on small town life and life in general. See it if you can.
Remaining performances are March 18 and 19, March 25 and 26 and April 1 and 2 at 8 pm and March 20, March 27 and April 3 at 2 pm. For tickets, call Hubbard Hall at 677-2495.