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Our Town (TV) [2003] Paul Newman
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ThorntonWilde



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Our Town (TV 2003) 
 
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0353849/

Our Town is a three-act play by American playwright Thornton Wilder. It is a character story about an average town's citizens in the early twentieth century as depicted through their everyday lives (particularly George Gibbs, a doctor's son, and Emily Webb, the daughter of the town's newspaper editor and George's future wife). Using metatheatrical devices, Wilder sets the play in a 1930s theater. He uses the actions of the Stage Manager to create the town of Grover's Corners for the audience. Scenes from its history between the years of 1901 and 1913 play out.

Wilder wrote the play while in his 30s. In June 1937, he lived in the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, one of the many locations where he worked on the play. During a visit to Zürich in September 1937, he drafted the entire third act in one day after a long evening walk in the rain with a friend, author Samuel Morris Steward.

Our Town was first performed at McCarter Theater in Princeton, New Jersey on 22 January 1938. It next opened at the Wilbur Theater in Boston, Massachusetts on 25 January 1938. Its New York City debut was on 4 February 1938 at Henry Miller's Theatre, and later moved to the Morosco Theatre. The play was produced and directed by Jed Harris. Wilder received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1938 for the work. In 1946, the Soviet Union prevented a production of Our Town in the Russian sector of occupied Berlin "on the grounds that the drama is too depressing and could inspire a German suicide wave."

Our Town is a 2003 film adaptation of the famous play of the same name by Thornton Wilder. It stars Paul Newman, who was nominated for both an Emmy and a SAG award for outstanding acting. It was shown on PBS as part of Masterpiece Theatre after first being shown on the cable channel Showtime. It was filmed at the Booth Theatre in Manhattan.


  Jayne Atkinson  ...  Mrs. Gibbs  
  Wendy Barrie-Wilson  ...  Woman in Balcony  
  Reathel Bean  ...  Man in Auditorium  
  John Braden  ...  Professor Willard  
  Tom Brennan  ...  Joe Stoddard  
  Kieran Campion  ...  Baseball Player  
  Patch Darragh  ...  Baseball Player  
  Frank Converse  ...  Dr. Gibbs  
  Jane Curtin  ...  Mrs. Webb  
  Jeffrey DeMunn  ...  Mr. Webb  
  Mia Dillon  ...  Mrs. Soames  
  Conor Donovan  ...  Wally Webb  
  Ben Fox  ...  George Gibbs  
  Kristen Hahn  ...  Rebecca Gibbs  
  Carter Jackson  ...  Sam Craig  



The Stage Manager (Paul Newman) shows us glimpses of several days in the life of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire in 1900, 1903 and about nine years after that. The Webb and Gibbs families live next to each other and their children Emily (Maggie Lacey) and George (Ben Fox) are childhood sweethearts who eventually decide to marry. The Stage Manager examines everyday life from several points of view, all of which prepares us for a harsh lesson: The living seem barely aware of the miracle of their lives, and even less aware of how fleeting a lifetime can be.

The play Our Town works its magic over and over again. It is folksy, funny and universally understood even by cultures far afield from a little New Hampshire town with its one milkman and one sheriff. For the majority of Americans raised in something resembing conventional families, the image of the Webb and Gibbs households is almost painfully nostalgic - who doesn't yearn to see their parents at an early age again, or wish they could go back and appreciate what was good about their lives and loved ones? 

Our Town has several unexpected narrative shocks that hit us like catastrophic events in our own lives. Thornton Wilder's fantasy excursion outside of reality is more than an opportunity to editorialize on the foibles of the characters. It reveals the truth of our solitary existences, while making our complacent acceptance of life seem like a curious flaw of the species. The Stage Manager talks of religion as if it is relatively unimportant, but we see a gallery of Grover's Corners dead in their graves patiently waiting for what might be the rapture. Among them is a suicide, a man who doesn't seem to be suffering for the sin of throwing away his life. It's a very curious story. 

Wilder's output as a dramatist wasn't prodigious; as major works for the stage go, there's really only this, The Matchmaker and The Skin of Our Teeth. But Our Town alone would put him in the pantheon, if a notch below O'Neill, Williams, and Miller; it really is a dark, dark play, the principal topic of which is the obliviousness with which most of us live our lives most of the time. The central conceit of the piece is that it plays without props or scenery; it's the job of the actors to conjure those up for us, which can mean either that the cast is incredibly persuasive, or that nobody had any time or money to spend on production costs. 

Welcome to Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, at the turn of the last century—Wilder's play had the veneer of nostalgia even when it was first produced, in 1938. We follow the lives of the families Webb and Gibbs; they are next-door neighbors and lifelong acquaintances, as are just about all of the inhabitants of Grover's Corners. Presiding is a mythical, Godlike figure, never referred to by name by the other actors, known in the text only as the Stage Manager; here the part is taken by one of the towering actors of recent decades, Paul Newman, and it's this bit of casting that may have been the catalyst for the production. Seeing Newman in this role is a reminder that he's not just a great big movie star, and was for decades more than a very pretty face; he's of the same generation as Brando, and if he isn't as revered in acting circles, it may be because of the thoroughly professional, workmanlike way in which he approaches his craft. Not only does he demonstrate a high level of skill, as you might expect; he seems to be having a good old time with the role, as well, especially when he gets to drop into the story and have some fun in character as, more or less, a series of old coots. 

The programme for the revival of Our Town contained an amusing biography for its lead actor. Written by Paul Newman himself, it suggests that he is "best known for his spectacularly successful food conglomerate ... Purely by accident," it adds, "he has done 51 films and four Broadway plays." 

Our Town marks Newman's first theatre appearance in 38 years. The production first appeared at the Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut, where Newman's wife, Joanne Woodward, is the artistic director; it was directed by a friend, James Naughton. They persuaded the one-time star of Sweet Bird of Youth to play the Stage Manager, and have now brought the production to Broadway's Booth Theatre. 

Thornton Wilder's masterpiece may be the quintessential American play. Produced in 1938, with war looming, Our Town focuses on the touchstones of ordinary existence: birth, courtship, marriage and death, as experienced by the inhabitants of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire. "It is an attempt to find value above all price for the smallest events in our daily life," Wilder wrote in the preface. Unlike Paul Osborn's Morning's at Seven, the other 1930s masterpiece of small-town Americana, Our Town has become so familiar from countless stagings in regional and community theatres that it seems corny and trite, although its optimism has always had a dark streak. 

It should have been easy for Newman to shine in these surroundings, but he has gone out of his way to dim his star wattage amid the ensemble. He enters in a low light, with his back to the audience, directing stagehands to move scenery. Then, having short-circuited possible applause, he turns and begins the play. In white shirt, sleeveless vest and watch fob, with his spectacles down on his nose, his Stage Manager has charm and occasional vinegar, but only once does he reach full throttle. That happens when he says: "You know how it is: you're 21 or 22 and you make some decisions, then wham! You're 70." As he speaks those words, Newman slams a fist into his hand. The shock is electric: clearly, this is a sentiment felt by the actor as much as the character.