Under the Direction of Kenny Leon, Broadway Revival of ‘Our Town’ Is a Plea for Harmony in Our Time

“Our Town” has been produced on Broadway very few times when you consider the outsize popularity and influence of Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, first staged in 1938. The fifth revival, which opened this week, begins with a twist: As the actors assemble, we hear a melange of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim prayers, performed by the interfaith musical trio Abraham Jam.As the play’s narrator, the Stage Manager, will soon tell us — and as most of us already know, having seen at least one or two of countless professional and amateur productions — the fictional small town in New Hampshire that Wilder designated as its setting, Grover’s Corners, is almost exclusively Christian: “We’re eighty-five percent Protestants; twelve percent Catholics; rest, indifferent,” he reports.The genius of the play, of course, lies in the timeless universality of its themes — mortality, community, the unrelenting march of time, the extraordinary challenges and pleasures of ordinary life — as it documents small-town America between 1901 and 1913. In the program for this new staging, helmed by Kenny Leon, the time and setting are marked as “Now”; hence, I assume, that opening sequence, which nods both to the diversity of New York audiences and to troubles flaring around the world, as different groups fail to find the harmony represented by prayers woven together in song. Mr. Leon’s “Our Town” is, as much as anything else, a plea for that harmony. For starters, the two central families — Dr. George Gibbs, the neighborhood physician, and his wife, Julia, and their two children; and the local newspaper editor, Charles Webb, his wife, Myrtle, and their two children — are respectively played by Black and white actors. Ephraim Sykes and Zoey Deutch in ‘Our Town.’ Daniel RaderWhile multiracial casting has become the rule rather than the exception in contemporary theater, it’s telling that Mr. Leon — who has dedicated much of his career to championing great Black artists — has specifically assigned different races to these families, who are close even before the Gibbs son, George, marries the Webb daughter, Emily.The starry cast is costumed, by Dede Ayite, to evoke early 20th century New England in foundation while adding distinctly modern touches: Making her Broadway debut as Emily, Zoey Deutch pairs a fluffy top with a miniskirt, while Ephraim Sykes’s George models sleek sportswear and a gold chain. As the Stage Manager, Jim Parsons wears jeans and a matching blazer.Some music, too, acknowledges the present, and the more recent past: Bebe and Cece Winans’s twinkling gospel/R&B number “Lost Without You” is played at George and Emily’s wedding, and ensemble member Bobby Daye performs his own composition, the pining “Look at the Stars.” Set designer Beowulf Boritt uses floating, gleaming lanterns to evoke the stars that figure prominently as both natural and spiritual symbols.Nothing about this “Our Town” is especially radical, though. Mr. Leon embraces Wilder’s metatheatrical approach, so that Katie Holmes’s Mrs. Webb and Michelle Wilson’s Mrs. Gibbs pantomime breakfast preparations as Mr. Parsons, addressing the audience, sustains the dry, folksy tone you’d expect, mining this most beloved storyteller’s unfussy dignity and gentle humor. Richard Thomas and Billy Eugene Jones bring a similarly easy wit and laid-back authority to the respective roles of Mr. Webb and Dr. Gibbs. As Simon Stimson, the booze-addled choir leader who represents the troubled edges of small-town life — he’s the character who would be most at home in a David Lynch film — Donald Webber Jr. is droll and haunting, particularly in the play’s quietly wrenching final act. (The three relatively short acts are performed here without an intermission.)It should still be impossible to leave a production of “Our Town” not feeling shaken and a little wonder-struck, grateful for all the seemingly small treasures that life can offer. Mr. Leon’s aim, clearly, is to also make us wish for a better world, and as it’s relayed here, that goal doesn’t seem at all incongruous with Wilder’s vision.Correction: Abraham Jam is the name of the interfaith musical trio. An earlier version included an incorrect name.

Under the Direction of Kenny Leon, Broadway Revival of ‘Our Town’ Is a Plea for Harmony in Our Time

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