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Review: Our Town Returns to Broadway With Jim Parsons, a Diverse Cast, and Onstage Seating

Kenny Leon invigorates Thornton Wilder’s classic at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

Pete Hempstead

Pete Hempstead

| Broadway |

October 10, 2024

Ephraim Sykes and Zoey Deutch in OUR TOWN Photo by Daniel Rader
Ephraim Sykes and Zoey Deutch play George and Emily in the new Broadway production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, directed by Kenny Leon, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.
(© Daniel Rader)

In Our Town, the Stage Manager says he’s going to put a copy of the play in the cornerstone of a bank so that “people a few thousand years from now’ll know a few simple facts about us.” If the past is any indication, in a thousand years it’ll still be running.

Ever since Our Town’s first Broadway production in 1938, Thornton Wilder’s quiet drama about small-town life in a bygone era has been a consistent draw. Theaters with small budgets like it because it doesn’t call for much scenery, and audiences love it because its story harks back to a simpler time when folks were nice to each other, neighbors formed communities, and life had a predictable ebb and flow.

But can a play that paints a nostalgic, one-sided picture of white people in a turn-of-the-century New Hampshire town speak to broader audiences today? Kenny Leon’s new revival of Our Town at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre answers that question with a resounding Yes. Though the events of the play still clearly belong to early 20th-century America, Leon asks us to imagine it as taking place Now and to reimagine what that time might have looked like.

Ephraim Sykes, Richard Thomas, Zoey Deutch Photo by Daniel Rader
Ephraim Sykes, Richard Thomas, and Zoey Deutch in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, directed by Kenny Leon.
(© Daniel Rader)

Jim Parsons, playing the philosophizing Stage Manager with a cheery wistfulness, breaks the fourth wall to introduce the denizens of Grover’s Corners, who may appear a little differently than you remember. The Webbs are still a white family, but the Gibbses are Black. The milkman Howie Newsome (John McGinty) is deaf, and the townsfolk all sign ASL. The geology professor is portrayed by Indigenous actor Shyla Lefner. A star of David appears on a cemetery headstone. This feels a lot more like our town than Our Town ever has. (Leon hasn’t changed the story, which runs a brisk hour and 45 minutes without the usual two intermissions.)

The play focuses on mundane events that shape the townsfolks’ lives (Dede Ayite’s eclectic costumes run the gamut of 20th-century styles). At the heart are Emily Webb (Zoe Deutch) and her beau, George Gibbs (Ephraim Sykes), who fall in love. Emily is the smartest in her class, but George would rather be farming or catching a baseball (Justin Ellington enhances the action now and then with the old-timey sound effects of a Foley artist). There’s not much in the way of scandal in this sleepy vill other than the occasional nighttime meandering of the town drunk, Simon Stimson (Donald Webber Jr.). People live and die, and life goes on as the world outside Grover’s Corners quietly changes, everyone blissfully unaware of any turmoil beyond the borders of their town (pop. 2,642).

L to R Anthony Michael Lopez, Safiya Kaijya Harris, Shyla Lefner, Billy Eugene Jones, Michelle Wilson, Jim Parsons, Katie Holmes Photo by Daniel Rader
Anthony Michael Lopez, Safiya Kaijya Harris, Shyla Lefner, Billy Eugene Jones, Michelle Wilson, Jim Parsons, and Katie Holmes in Kenny Leon’s new production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town on Broadway.
(© Daniel Rader)

What makes this play an enduring classic isn’t dramatic tension but its gentle meditations on existence, mortality, and the passage of time. Leon gets this message across with terrific performances from the enormous cast of 28, starting with Parsons, who delivers his homespun advice with the cheerfulness of a pastoral sage. Adding humor are Billy Eugene Jones and Michelle Wilson as George’s shouty but loving parents who think their son will make a fine husband for Emily. The idea of an interracial marriage in this imaginary time doesn’t trouble them at all.

It doesn’t bother Emily’s father (Richard Thomas), either. Adept at downhome roles like John-Boy on The Waltons and Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, Thomas is completely comfortable in his role, dryly dispensing fatherly maxims as George, played by Sykes with shy charisma, nervously listens. Katie Holmes looks less comfortable in her role as Mrs. Webb, speaking with itchy restraint, and Sykes and Deutch don’t have all that much chemistry as the young lovebirds. But Safiya Kaijya Harris gives off fun, cheeky sibling energy as George’s sister, Rebecca, when she and Sykes share a scene.

L to R Ephie Aardema Sarnak, Julie Halston, Richard Thomas, Hagan Oliveras Photo by Daniel Rader
Julie Halston (center) with Ephie Aardema Sarnak, Richard Thomas, and Hagan Oliveras in Our Town, directed by Kenny Leon.
(© Daniel Rader)

Of the actors in smaller roles, Julie Halston deserves mention for her hilarious performance as town gossip Mrs. Soames. Able to pull a rubber chicken out of every scratch of dialogue, Halston gets some of the show’s biggest laughs when she makes a scene at George and Emily’s wedding.

Leon does make one significant addition to the show at the outset when the townspeople enter. Like a congregation of souls assembling from every faith on earth, they sing and pray in a cacophony of voices and music as they gather onstage. It’s an unexpected opening that’s a bit more disorienting than moving, but it establishes the inclusive tone of the production.

Jim Parsons and the cast of OUR TOWN Photo by Daniel Rader
Jim Parsons and the cast of Our Town. The set is designed by Beowulf Boritt, and the lighting by Allen Lee Hughes.
(© Daniel Rader)

Beowulf Boritt has surprises too with his dramatic scenery, highlighted by a cluster of lanterns (designed by Allen Lee Hughes) that soar above the stage like a comet’s tail. In some productions, George and Emily’s bedrooms are represented with ladders, but here, the young lovers talk to each other through windows in a large backdrop that suggests the weather-worn side of a barn. There are also several rows of pews located on both sides of the stage to give a couple dozen audience members the chance to watch from the sidelines. It’s another way to commune with the past.

That connection hits home in the stirring final act, where Deutch gets our hearts to rise up into our throats. I haven’t heard that much sobbing from an audience since The Notebook, and the emotional impact is a testament to the power of the play and this production. No need to bother with a cornerstone. Our Town is here to stay.

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