Marquette University’s Helfaer Theatre chose the theme of “home” to celebrate its 40th anniversary and opened the season with Thornton Wilder’s exploration of small-town life, Our Town.
Set in Grover’s Corners, N.H., at the turn of the 20th century, the story is curated by a meta-theatrical narrator called the Stage Manager (Alexander Coddington, brilliantly channeling Wilder’s own voice) who gently guides us through a 12-year span in which we look in on two families at different points in their lives. The script is atemporal; the Stage Manager allows scenes to play out, but also gives us hints of things to come and sometimes uproots linear time entirely for the sake of character exploration.
Production values in Marquette’s Our Town are ideal. Per Wilder’s direction, the set is extremely minimal, highlighting the human element and driving home the sense that this is all a memory to be considered from afar, not a tale of life still in the making. Lighting (Chester Loeffler-Bell) and sound (Dylan Elhai) are similarly striking for their sparseness. Connie Petersen’s resplendent period costumes are the great exception to the minimalist ethos, affording an appropriate strangeness to the ghostly characters conducting their business in pantomime on a nearly bare stage.
In the first act, the slow, comforting rhythm of everyday life prevails. We watch George Gibbs (Ben Braun) and Emily Webb (Elizabeth Formella) attending school together and sweetly discussing their homework across the upper windows of their neighboring homes. In the second act, we see them fall in love and marry. The final act takes place in the town cemetery, where the dead sit quietly in chairs gradually being “weaned away from the earth” and awaiting the next transformation. Wilder explores the idea of revisiting scenes from one’s life after dying and posits the poignant conclusion, “Oh Earth, you are too wonderful for any of us to realize you!” People live with blinders on, not even taking the time to look at one another. And yet our brief lives are infinitely precious. Though it is tempting to view the play as a tragedy, the message is more philosophical: a call to greater awareness of those things and people we take for granted, and a reminder that we never know the day nor the hour.
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Our Town runs through Oct. 5 at the Helfaer Theatre, 525 N. 13th St. For tickets, call 414-288-7504 or visit showclix.com/events/marquettetheatre.
