The new Broadway revival of “Our Town,” which opened Thursday night at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, puts all its chips on “Our.”
Theater review
OUR TOWN
One hour and 45 minutes, with no intermission. At the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, 243 W 47th Street.
Its cast is more diverse than any production of Thornton Wilder’s classic play you’re likely to have seen, and the actors begin by singing a variety of religious songs — Christian, Jewish, Islamic.
The Catholic one, “On Eagle’s Wings,” was released more than 70 years after the show’s 1901 setting. You see? You’re at Our town.
Similarly, in the “Love and Marriage” second act, newlyweds Emily Webb (Zoey Deutch) and George Gibbs (Ephraim Sykes) walk down the aisle, not to Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March,” but to “Lost Without You” by BeBe and CeCe Winans. Oh, it’s Our town, all right.
The crowd has always been a character in Wilder’s forward-thinking play. The all-seeing Stage Manager, played by Jim Parsons, speaks directly to us on a mostly bare stage about the ho-hum daily routines of the people of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire: births, deaths, marriages, the paperboy’s route, the breakfast menu, the kids’ homework.
But at the Barrymore, our role is amped up. Several rows of audience members are seated on the stage, and the cast makes many entrances through the orchestra aisles, stomping past ticket-buyers. Lest you forget that you’re watching Our town.
So, why, if it is Our town, is director Kenny Leon’s staging of “Our Town” among the most uninvolving and anemic I have ever seen?
Because the basics have been overlooked.
Despite the random contemporary touches, the actors get so mired in “gee willikers!” nostalgia and drippy sentimentality Wilder’s script does not call for that playgoers cease to connect to anybody.
Scenes are, at once, overacted — like an olde tyme park — and underacted, with nary a believable or grounded moment to speak of.
The ensemble, including Katie Holmes as Mrs. Webb, Richard Thomas as Mr. Webb and Michelle Wilson as Mrs. Gibbs, all operate on different, conflicting levels of style and energy. Individually, nobody is bad, but collectively, they never cohere. This is less a town than a group of shut-in neighbors who’ve never met.
Of course, whether “Our Town” soars or sputters all comes down to Emily.
What is perhaps the most heartbreaking speech in all of American theater, when she asks through tears, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?” is coolly plowed through by Deutch like January snow.
She is an appealing performer, to be sure. I especially liked her in the low-budget comedy film “Buffaloed.” But we just don’t buy Emily’s journey from student to bride to the afterlife. There is no arc of any kind.
Sykes, of “Ain’t Too Proud,” fares better as her forever-beau George, a less weighty part but one he makes earnest and likable.
Holmes recedes into the weathered-boards scenery, and gentle Thomas, playing newspaper editor Webb, takes his “Waltons” wholesomeness out of storage after a sleazier run on “Ozark.”
Parsons, who I had serious doubts about, picks the right path as the Stage Manager, which is to push back against what is often a warm and cuddly fireside chat persona. He goes too far, however, and our guide comes off as a bit of a jerk. Still, to his credit, it’s not Sheldon.
The finest actor in the revival, far and away, is Billy Eugene Jones as Dr. Gibbs. He’s paternal without depending on fatherly stereotypes. He doesn’t overdo the man’s age as he holds onto a youthful vigor. He speaks like a normal person. If only there were 20 more of him.
Act Three of “Our Town,” partly concerns what happens after death. The real ghost haunting the Barrymore, though, is David Cromer’s peerless 2009 production of Wilder’s drama that ran for more than a year off-Broadway.
Unlike what’s on Broadway today, that brilliant show pulsed life into the 1938 drama that some dismiss as dusty, and reminded audiences that no matter when it was written or is set, “Our Town” is and has always been about us and our sad failure to open our eyes and look at one another.
That was My “town.”
