To say director Tom Isbell came up with an interesting way of restaging Thornton Wilder's "Own Town" at the Playhouse is a bit tongue-in-cheek because scenic designer Curtis Phillips has literally created a new stage that extends out to where Row A used to be.
This solid production requires that almost thrust-like creation because Isbell keeps his cast on stage from start to finish on eight levels of unpainted wood to observe the action and provide the requisite sound effects for this Pulitzer Prize-winning play well known for forbidding either scenery or props. So it is impressive when Pat Isbell and Sarah Ahlquist as Mrs. Gibbs and Mrs. Webb create a moment of simple intimacy while pretending to string beans on a stage filled with people and just a few feet from the audience.
Isbell has enjoyed a well-deserved reputation as an actor's director and you can see his touch when Cat Brindisi and Seth Carlson as young Emily and George have the most important conversation of their lives looking straight ahead instead of each other. Isbell also plays the Stage Manger whose series of exquisitely nuanced monologues, complete with Yankee cadences, make the director the soul of the show onstage as well.
"Our Town" is the great warhorse of American community theater, so I was surprised to learn this appears to be only the second time the Playhouse has put on this classic drama. The play was written in 1938 and takes place during the previous turn of the century, but has at its core the universality of the human experience.
The show's humor by ways of simple observation reaches its apex when Kevin Walsh's Mr. Webb drolly explains the intricacies of weddings and marital bliss to his future son-in-law. Caity Shea Violette makes a delightful (Merrimac) Valley Girl as young Rebecca Gibbs, and Chani Ninneman is an absolute hoot as Mrs. Soames at the big wedding.
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This powerful play ends on such a poignant note that when the Stage Manager bade us goodnight and the cast left the stage, I thought it would have been utterly appropriate if they had not returned for their well deserved curtain call.
LAWRANCE BERNABO wants to combine the three shows that opened tonight into one called "Our American Tommy."
