'Our Town'

      It is rarely, if ever, that I get to go to a theatrical first night, let alone one that launches a new theatre company.  Friday evening, however, I did just that when the Grand Theatre, Swansea, presented the Welsh National Theatre's inaugural production; Thornton Wilding's 1938 play 'Our Town'.

     This three act play, which is rather Burkean in its conservatism, is set within the American trope/ideal of the small town - the fictional New Hampshire community of Grovers Corner's. Twelve years - 1909-1913 - are portrayed. Nothing much actually happens, and there is an emphasis on community and continuity. A telling detail, or theme, is the increasing tendency of the inhabitants to lock their doors at night.  This essential conservativism, is not quite matched in the staging - the stage is bare, props are minimal and it is all rather 'meta'.  The main character, here played by Michael Sheen - a charismatic stage presence - is the omniscient Stage Manager.  A character that is perhaps a manifestation of the divine.

     Changes have been made to both text and staging, which I believe involved input from Russell T Davies. Grovers Corner's has been re-located to Wales: Main St has become Stryd Fawr.  A small point, but oddly (or arbitrarily?) many Americanism have been allowed to remain.  Well, the line has to be drawn somewhere.  A gay love affair (partly as a way of explaining a character's alcoholism) appears silently and fleetingly in the second act. 

     Finally in the 3rd act, at the conclusion of the play the Stage Manager is seen to join the company of the dead.  It works well enough, but the original direction is that the Stage Manager draws a curtain across the stage. (I detect the hand of Russell T Davies here; he has a history of portraying the death of God.) I worry that it undermines the Stage Manager's words at the beginning of the act:

     "We all know, that something is eternal.  And it ain't houses, and it ain't names, and it ain't even the stars...and everyone knows in their bones that something is eternal and that something has to do with human beings."

     

     The notoriously acerbic critic, John Simon, of The New Yorker, in reviewing a performance of the play at the Plumstead Playhouse (The New Yorker, 15.12.1969) wrote '....'Our Town' is recommended only to people with a craving for communal hagiography flavoured with maple syrup.'  On the strength of this production, I don't feel that to be true.

     A brilliant beginning.