Susan Granger’s review of “Our Town” (Showtime TV)
If you missed the sold-out Westport Country Playhouse’s production of “Our Town,” now is your chance to see what made it so incredibly special. Showtime and PBS’ Exxon Mobil Masterpiece Theater filmed Paul Newman’s first appearance on Broadway in 38 years – and you can tune in Saturday night, May 24, at 8 PM on SHOWTIME TV for a front-row seat. Set at the turn of the 20th century, Thornton Wilder’s insightful play reveals the ordinary lives of the citizens of a small New Hampshire town called Grover’s Corners. Soft-spoken, bespectacled and avuncular, Paul Newman embodies the low-key, omniscient Stage Manager and narrator. At the center of the story are Emily Webb and George Gibbs, young lovers who grow up, get married and start a family. When Emily dies during childbirth, she joins the other townspeople who have passed on and now observe from the grave the lives of those left behind. Given the chance to re-live one day, Emily chooses her 12th birthday and is crushed when she realizes how unable we – the living – are to appreciate the blissful simplicity of our existences, placing “a value above all price for the smallest events in our daily life.” Directed with illuminating clarity by James Naughton, Paul Newman eloquently conveys the plaintive wisdom, along with the superb ensemble cast: (in alphabetical order) Jayne Atkinson, John Braden, Frank Converse, Jane Curtin, Jeffrey DeMunn, Mia Dillon, Ben Fox, Maggie Lacey, Jake Robards and Stephen Spinella. On the Granger Made-for-TV Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Our Town” is an ingenious, indelible 10. Shot over five days with four cameras at Broadway’s Booth Theater, it’s classic Americana and exhilarating family entertainment.
