Inspired production keeps 'Our Town' clever, modern

Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun Times

08/09 Awards
Open Run NYC
Obie Award, Best Director - David Cromer
After Dark Award, Direction - David Cromer
After Dark Award, Outstanding Performance - Jennifer Grace
Jeff Theater Award Best Director - David Cromer
Theater World Award, Best NYC Debut - Jennifer Grace
Top 10 Plays 2008 - Chicago Tribune
Top 10 Plays 2008 - Chicago Sun Times
Top 5 Plays 2008 - TimeOut Chicago
Highly Recommended - Chicago Reader





The 1938 Pulitzer Prize-winning play -- which opened on Broadway as the Great Depression lingered and war clouds were gathering over Europe -- reminds us of our shared address when one young girl delights in the way a letter has been addressed to a resident of her town: "Jane Crofut; The Crofut Farm; Grover's Corners; Sutton County; New Hampshire; United States of America; Continent of North America; Western Hemisphere; the Earth; the Solar System; the Universe; the Mind of God." The play also serves as a wake-up call to anyone who might have forgotten that any address is only temporary, as death will eventually claim each of us and remove us from what Wilder saw as the quiet divinity of everyday existence.

David Cromer has brought a true touch of genius to the Hypocrites' new production of "Our Town," which he has directed, and also stars in (with a wicked brilliance) as the Stage Manager. And in the black box environment of Chopin Theatre's basement -- with no decor but two sets of worn kitchen tables and chairs (until a profound and stunning moment of reversal in the play's third act) -- he has created a bond between the audience and his perambulating actors with such (seeming) effortlessness that they all become residents of the very average New Hampshire town of Grover's Corners without even knowing it. Cromer has magic up his sleeve and it involves capturing the unbridled truth.

If this sounds a bit mysterious, well, it is. For there is a wondrous simplicity and nakedness about this production as it spins a blazingly intense yet sharply satiric story of two small-town, middle-class American families whose destinies become intertwined through the rituals of daily life, love and marriage and death.

A cast of 19 (plus a few terrific "ringers") is altogether remarkable. The young lovers -- Mark Fagin as George Gibbs, the town doctor's youthfully feckless son who quickly morphs into a man, and Jennifer Grace as Emily Webb, the brainy, insightful editor's daughter -- are heartbreakingly real. Stacy Stoltz and Samantha Gleisten do exquisite work as the respective mothers, with John Byrnes and Tim Curtis the drolly philosophical dads. As for musical director Jonathan Mastro, who plays Simon Stimson, Grover's Corners' alcoholic choir director, he nearly steals the show as the artist- outsider.

This production should travel the globe. It would be a far better ambassador of "American values" than any stiff-necked consular official”.