Our Town, now at Rose Theatre Kingston, is an American classic, set in a small town in New Hampshire in the early part of the 20th century.
The newly-created Welsh National Theatre, led by Michael Sheen as artistic director, bring this inaugural production into London with a definite flavour of Wales.
Sheen is the narrator/stage manager in Thornton Wilder’s busy but deceptively simple play. Grover’s Corners is a town peopled by the same names since its creation in the late 1600s. People are born. They work, marry, have children. They die.
Bringing Welsh actors and culture into this, complete with place names and choir singing hymns in translation, links Our Town intimately with Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood. Moments we witness. Lives we watch as they rush by.
It’s a three-act structure (with an interval that felt unnecessary) with minimal staging – planks, ladders, and bits of greenery create houses, stores, rooftops, a church, a graveyard. The cast is ever-present and closely choreographed.
Our Town is just that. The story of the characters in the town. The main families, Gibbs and Webb. The milkman, the organist, the policeman. The cogs that turn the wheel of Grover’s Corners.
It’s an unusual play. Sheen’s narrator offers constant commentary, often conspiring with the audience to point out characters – and what will happen to them. Each character has something to do, but there are no big shocks or conflicts.
The technical aspects of this production are excellent. The lighting, designed by Ryan Joseph-Stafford, adds warmth, focus, and immersion, using all the auditorium as parts of Wilder’s world.
Director Francesca Goodridge captures both the folksy whimsy of Our Town and the philosophical connection of the final act. Performances by Yasemin Özdemir, Rhys Warrington, Nia Roberts, Sian Reese-Williams and Gareth Snook add depth.
The Wilder estate tightly controls the play’s interpretation – so references to baseball remain – but this production feels like the Welsh community built on foreign soil.
Dylan Jones’s compositions and sound design offer a sonic landscape as otherworldly as the moonlight the youngsters watch from their bedrooms.
In all, a magical production with a high-quality sheen – no pun intended! Our Town teaches us to stop and look at the world and each other, because our little lives are over much too soon.
5 stars.
Our Town continues at Rose Theatre Kingston until 28 Mar – tickets here.
Visit the Welsh National Theatre website.
Photo credit: Helen Murray