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Thornton Wilder

Our Town

October 26, 2024

Wilder’s experimental play uses no scenery except for two tables, some chairs, a piano and usually two ladders for the upstairs bedroom windows of the young people. Here, however, Leon and set designer Beowulf Boritt have eliminated the ladders for two windows that open in the wooden back wall. Parsons’ description of the town and the street is so vivid that your imagination sees all that is meant to be there. Many of the stage effects are created by Allen Lee Hughes’ subtle lighting plot which takes us back to the end of the last century with lanterns both on the footlights and in Parsons’ hand. Leon has also added another one of the five senses by piping in the odors of heliotrope, vanilla, and bacon, one in each act. Professor Willard is here played by a woman, and as John McGinty playing milkman Howie Newsome is hearing challenged, the other actors speak to him in sign language, a new effect for this drama. [more]

The Counter

October 10, 2024

Despite this obvious shortcoming of The Counter, Anthony Edwards, a growing New York stage presence after much TV and movie fame, resolutely ignores it, never letting Kennedy's contrived writing come between him and the character (as a frustrated fan of ER, I've seen this steadfastness before). The scraggly bearded Edwards portrays Paul, a retired firefighter from far upstate New York whose geniality occasionally gives way to pronouncements about the monotony of his remaining days and the unfairness of his former ones. Although these gnawing thoughts are "secrets," he shares them with Katie (Susannah Flood), a fairly new transplant to the area who is also a waitress in the diner he frequents when nobody else is around. That's essential for Kennedy's ludicrous plot, because Paul's inner turmoil manifests itself in a grave request for Katie to do something that, if overheard, would cause any sentient adult to immediately contact the authorities, resulting in the play ending not too long after it begins, unless Kennedy felt like keeping the story going through a depiction of Paul's psychiatric treatments. [more]

Our Town…but Wilder

October 10, 2022

Krevolin is a clever writer, turning Wilder’s American folk tale into a modern comedy/drama with relevance to today’s audiences.  Although he often makes his points a bit too obviously with the rantings of the bigots veering too close to cliché, he nimbly juggles the complex inter-relationships. His staging is simple, helped by Aurora Winger’s lighting.  Characters often enter down the aisle as they approach the stage tossing off their lines, cheerfully lit by Winger. While waiting for the next inevitable production of Wilder’s Our Town, whet your appetite with its modern cousin, "Our Town…but Wilder." [more]

The Skin of Our Teeth

May 4, 2022

You would think that at the tail end of a pandemic Thornton Wilder’s 1943 Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Skin of Our Teeth" would be the perfect play for our moment. This experimental play which pays tribute to the resilience of the human race offers hope in time of adversity. The experimental nature of the play uses techniques promulgated by James Joyce, Luigi Pirandello and Bertolt Brecht, none of which are so new or unfamiliar anymore: actors addressing the audience directly and stepping out of character, anachronistic events or references, etc. There are allusions to the Old and New Testament, Greek Mythology and Shakespeare. Writing in the middle of World War II, Wilder presciently made use of such themes as the problems of climate change, refugees, dysfunctional marriages, nepotism and political corruption, which remain at the forefront today. Even after 80 years, Wilder’s play seems eternally forward-looking, eternally novel, and continues to be an important piece of American theater. [more]

Gnit

November 9, 2021

Will Eno’s wry, contemporary 'Gnit" solves the problem of attempting to stage Ibsen’s unwieldy, five-hour verse play "Peer Gynt." The play given its world premiere at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in 2013 is now making its New York debut at Theater for a New Audience in a production directed by Oliver Butler, a longtime collaborator with Eno. Heavily influenced by the plays of Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco, "Gnit" is a journey of the self to enlightenment with travel throughout the world. Part road movie, part folklore, and part horror story, "Gnit" makes an old play new again. [more]

The Alcestiad

June 19, 2021

Aside from the unevenness of the acting, Drance’s production has no consistent tone, shifting from comedy to drama to tragedy and back again. Not all of his interesting ideas are carried through: the first two acts have different performers playing Admetus and Alcestis which demonstrates the shift of 12 years; however, in the third act when Alcestis should be an old woman, the same actress who played her in her prime continues in the part. While the costumes by Gian Marco Riccardo Lo Forte and Mark Tambella are serviceable they are rather bland and unprepossessing. The uncredited sound design and the original music by Sara Galassini are muddy and unclear as broadcast from the one speaker on the left side of the audience. While there is no lighting design as the play is performed in broad daylight at this time of year starting at 7 PM, by the time the play is ending it is twilight and the fading light will make it painful for some viewers. [more]

The Skin of Our Teeth

March 8, 2017

Thornton Wilder’s "The Skin of Our Teeth" with its benign belief in the resilience of the human condition is unlike any other American play you are likely to see. Both heavily influenced by earlier European experiments in theater, it is also influential in itself. While Arin Arbus’ production for Theatre for a New Audience at times seems as though it need tighting up, it is a play that must be experienced in the theater which is why it has never been turned into a Hollywood movie. Go and see for yourself what only the live theater can do to expand your imagination. [more]

A Wilder Christmas

December 13, 2015

The Peccadillo Theater Company’s "A Wilder Christmas" is a gentle and genteel evening of theater:  two early Thornton Wilder one-act plays, directed with an attention to detail and a leisurely sense of timing by Dan Wackerman, the company’s artistic director.  "The Long Christmas Dinner" (1931) and "Pullman Car Hiawatha" (1930) together make for a rich sampling of Wilder’s familiar themes of family and the unavoidable specter of death (which, in Wilder, is only the beginning of another journey).  These themes were perfected in his 1938 masterpiece, "Our Town," including the conceit of a godlike Greek chorus in the form of a Stage Manager who explains and even supervises the action. [more]

Copyright Jack Quinn, 2001-2023