Our Town @ the Ethel Barrymore Theatre

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The Play: Our Town; Broadway’s fifth revival of this 1938 Pulitzer Prize-winning play about the cycle of life and death in a small New England Town is reimagined to create a more inclusive community in which local doctor Gibbs and his family are Black, newspaper editor Webb and his family are white and the locals include Jews, Muslims and a deaf milkman with whom many of them communicate in sign language   

Written by: Thornton Wilder        Directed by: Kenny Leon

One good thing: The TV actor Jim Parsons may have been cast because of his celebrity but he strikes all the right notes of sincerity and wryness in the pivotal role of the Stage Manager who serves as the play’s narrator

One not-so-great thing:  It may be unfair but the specter of the David Cromer’s near perfect 2009 production, which quietly underscored the play's big themes and brought out the subtexts in all the characters, haunts this less nimble revival as evidenced by a gesture of homage in the final scene

 

 

 


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