-
-
Ad Space
(728 x 90)
Published on 8/29/08
Survey
Sign up today!
I’ve always been partial to the sinister reading of Remembrance of Things Past as an elaborate phantasmagoria: Proust’s narrator remembers nothing, his sprawling belle epoque reminiscence being, in reality, just the feverish dreams of a bedroom-bound invalid (like Proust himself). There’s a similar take on Our Town that upends the conventional sentimental treatment familiar to what’s likely the most-produced-in-high-school-theater play ever. Like a nonmusical Spoon River Anthology, this reading makes ghosts of all the turn-of-the-century characters, not just the conscious dead of its last act—benign shades endlessly re-creating a perpetually fading time and place.
It’s a stretch, of course, but Wilder was the screenwriter on Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, which took an equally jaundiced view of “evil” and “good,” contrasting Joseph Cotten’s black-heart charisma with the everyday suffocation of the prim little burg where he hides out. There’s a proto-Lynchian, twilit ambiguity running through Wilder’s brand of Rockwelliana, something sympathetic yet cool: He’s come to praise and bury this vision of small-town America, as testified by his two “outsider” surrogates—the metatheatrical Stage Manager and the suicidal, alcoholic organist Simon Stimson—especially in their elegiac closing remarks.
Director Cromer—who also deftly plays the empathetic/dispassionate narrator—teases out muted, wistful notes, bringing things closer to the gently spectral style Wilder arguably intended than what you may’ve been conditioned to expect from this “nostalgic” chestnut. Outside one audacious—and brilliant—bit of set-design excess, things hew close to the bare-bones staging the script dictates. Leads Grace and Fagin are winning without stooping to aw-shucks cuteness; but it’s Byrnes and Curtis, as their golden-lit fathers, who deliver the show’s signature performances.
R Hatcher
Sun, May 18, at 09:25pm
I had the same impression of the review. Thoroughly pretentious and, worse, incomprehensible.
rob
Thu, May 08, at 10:53pm
I just saw this and the ending was amazing, but for 2 1/2 acts I was thinking this is the same our town I saw at two different high schools a few years ago
ro dolan
Sun, May 04, at 08:13pm
I guess I'm an old fashioned, un-hip type person but I felt cheated on the 3rd act. I felt they rushed through it and the motivations weren't properly explained. When Emily died and went to the cemetery, first she was, for some odd reason, very perky then she suddenly decided she wanted to go back to her life.
D.Isagree
Wed, Apr 30, at 05:16pm
I think this is a great review. Brian Nemtusak has been one of my favorite Chicago critics since he wrote for the Reader (they could sure use his help now.) I'd much rather read something interesting and intelligent than just one person's opinion. I can create that on my own. Too anyone literate, Nemtusak has set the tone for what we should expect when we see this play. Which I respect in a critic more than plain judgement.
Chester
Wed, Apr 30, at 11:54am
I agree with A. Personne. It's as if the review of the play itself is an afterthought. Totally disjointed and really provides no insight into the play's merits - good or bad. I have no personal affiliation to the Hypocrites staging. I look to TO to peak my interests and make recommendations for arts and culture. I got absolutely nothing out of this review. You guys can do better.
A. Personne
Tue, Apr 29, at 10:27pm
What a pompous feculent. This isn't a review, this is the writer's attempt, through blatant name dropping, to justify his list of overdue library books. One doesn't care about the scribe's light reading, one cares about the topic at hand: the play's the thing. Dump him.
