Allen Contemporary Theatre’s current production Of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town is pensive, insightful, intriguing. Co-Directors Kathleen and Kevin Vaught have put their own spin on Wilder’s groundbreaking drama that captured the essence of American Middle-class values in Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire. Wilder’s bare bones approach must have been shocking when it opened in 1938. There’s not any scenery, a few pieces of furniture, lots of pantomime.
The Stage Manager explains the structure of the town. At the outset, he describes those whose jobs wake them up earliest. The doctor tending to the most recent births, the milkman and paperboy, making their rounds. Mrs. Webb and Mrs. Gibbs are up earliest too. The Stage Manager enumerates basic events throughout the world. Oddly enough, statistics only serve to make Grover’s Corners feel smaller. How many new arrivals. How many deaths. How many high school graduates settle down in the place where they grew. How many meals shared, vows taken, deaths in battle.
At the center lie George Gibbs and Emily Webb, two teenagers who connect while gazing out their bedroom windows. George is popular and Emily, very smart. As their relationship evolves, Emily cares enough to tell George he’s being egotistical. When they grasp (while sipping strawberry phosphates) that they’ve found a life partner, Emily breaks into tears. We watch the Gibbs and Webbs in their nuclear dynamics: sibling rivalry, wives as hearthkeepers, husbands working till late at night, all with a strong sense of purpose.
Wilder makes indirect observations with finesse. The entrances and exits, set pieces that feel threadbare. Are the actors characters or playing the characters? Turns of phrase such as “crawling to the grave alone”….“something bigger than ourselves”. Emily yelling before the wedding: “I hate him [George] ! “ Not: I don’t know him, or I’m not ready. The Stage Manager ponders marriage as sacrament, or maybe the practical wisdom of living two by two? A Biblical reference or the nature of attachment? To take it a step further, why does the organist, Mr. Stimson, repeatedly get drunk?
When it’s made clear this town has little use for higher education or culture it doesn’t seem like just a matter of fact, but how things are. Is Wilder raising questions he expects us to answer, or (at least wonder) statement by omission? Not necessarily judging the provincial, but expository when the text and plot can feel pretty sparse.
Directors Kathleen and Kevin Vaught have done their part to imbue Our Town with warmth and sense of ancestry. The numerous antiquated familial photographs lining the upstage wall. Mrs. Webb tying up her hair, Howie Newsome’s aging Jersey Cow. George, overcome by dad’s admonishment. (George sniffles but doesn’t cry.) We sense the Vaughts are trying to inject some emotional presence. It’s not that the characters are cursory but relatively detached. Avoiding the full depth of their humanity.
Our Town pivots on Emily’s epiphany when she sees we’re too distracted for the miraculous in the everyday: “…goodbye to clocks ticking, and coffee, and freshly ironed dresses…” Sadness and sorrow culminating in a single revelation. The Vaughts focus our attention on this moment. Is Our Town a summation, a commentary, a depiction of humanity that is neither romanticized or trivialized, but just is?
Allen Contemporary Theatre presents: Our Town, playing May 1st-17th, 2026. 1210 E Main Street, #300, Allen, TX, United States, 75002 . (844) 822-8849. pr@allencontemporarytheatre.net