Our Town

Thornton Wilder is an atmospheric writer whose material, I feel, doesn't tend to travel across the Pond very well. Much of his work can only properly be appreciated in America or by Americans. Having said that, for those who want to dabble in the old (pre-war) American way of life, this is an excellent way of finding out, as too is some of his work on Hitchcock's film Shadow of a Doubt.

I took part in a Colchester Theatre Group production of another Wilder play, The Skin of Our Teeth back in July, so Manifest Theatre's version of Our Town had a natural curiosity value. One of the cast from The Skin of Our Teeth, Lester Pearce, has an amusing little cameo as a drunken choirmaster, and the rest of the cast are all pretty reliable and on good form too.

The story meanders along in slightly cosy fashion, on a rather Spartan set (as written), with Wilder once again enjoying crossing "the Fourth Wall" between stage and audience. The morbid third act is unexpectedly jolting, where four graves of some of the well known characters have three of them sitting behind them, soon to be joined by the fourth...

d: Kerry King
s: Guy Singleton (narrator), Phoebe Day, Adam Duarte-Dias, Nigel Rowe, Amanda Rowe, Helen Bridge, Lester Pearce, Adrian Bolton, Martin Rayner