i have never seen the play, or read the book. But my question is prompted by the beautiful musical score 9by Aaron Copeland). i was listening to it yesterday. Anybody know the story? is it a good read?
Thorton wilder isn’t widely read these days-what’s his reputation?
FYI, the composer’s name is Aaron Copland (no e) and the score is only for the 1940 movie version of the stage play. As for the story, there is a summary on Wikipedia. Edited to add that according to Wikipeda, that film version is in the public domain and can be downloaded from the Internet Archive (although the ending of the play was changed for that version).
I read it WAY back in high school, so the details are fuzzy, but I remember it as a very good read.
Yes, it’s a good read and a good play. It’s somewhat dated by today’s standards – much of what was new and original then has become trite and stale by now, because it’s been copied so often. (Shakespeare has a similar problem, he’s always writing in cliches.)
However, if you’ve got a good sense of history and don’t mind reading “old” stuff, it’s quite good… albeit depressing.
You should definitely experience it, but if you get the chance I’d have to suggest seeing it onstage above all else. While reading it gives you a chance to pace it for yourself and might reveal things which don’t quite come across, it really is much better to view it as the author intended. Plays were never meant to be read, they were made to be performed. The main character here is a stage manager which constantly breaks the 4th wall, which just comes across so much better if you aren’t reading these thing. It really adds something, and can be easier to keep track of what’s happening if you’re a more visual person. And the minimalistic set is always fun.
I think PBS has a performance available on dvd which should do as a substitute if no theatres in your area are doing it.
My theater class is watching the PBS version on DVD right now, with Paul Newman as the Stage Manager (the narrator), and it is very wordy. Lots of extra explanations at to what kind of rock is found in Grover’s Corners, etc – supposedly to reinforce the main idea that the human experience is a cycle, and love and death repeat endlessly through the millenia. A little tedious for some of my junior high/high schoolers.
Thornton Wilder is one of the very greatest of American writers. All of his books and plays are well worth reading. Old Town is probably his best known work, and it stands miles above almost anything else ever written for the American stage, but it’s still not even Wilder’s best work. That honor is reserved, variously, for The Eighth Day and The Bridge of San Luis Rey, depending on which one I’m rereading at the moment.
I will go to my grave regretting that I never had the opportunity to play Emily. At 49, I’m on the verge of being too old to play Mrs. Gibbs, but since our local community theater never does anything but musicals, I’m probably screwed there, too.
I love Our Town. When my mom died, my sister wanted us to sing “Blessed Be the Tie that Binds” at her funeral because of Our Town.
As others have recommended, see a live performance, if at all possible.
An anecdote relevant only to actors’ great love of Our Town: A community theater that I was very active in as a high schooler and young adult tried to cast a production of some play. They didn’t get enough people to cast it, so they decided to do Our Town instead but didn’t announce new auditions. They cast it from the people who’d auditioned for the other play. The amateur theater community was positively outraged! For one pillar of this particular community theater, the Stage Manager was the role of his lifetime. He was well up in years, and this clearly would have been his only opportunity, and he was denied it. He was so pissed off, he wrote the community theater out of his will.
One of the best plays in American theater. And, to paraphrase my father, one of the most American plays.
It can be deceptive to read, though. The setting is very mundane – a sample of small town life early in the 20th Century. You really have to see it performed to appreciate it fully.
Yes, see it if you can. I remember seeing a high-school production of it when I was about 14 - I had no trouble staying engaged in the story. I remember it well to this day, in fact - about 30 years later.
I toured with it in the 70s and I still find it a beautiful and powerful play. I have never felt it translated to the screen well. It is one of those intimate plays that need to touch an audience personally that I don’t believe can be conveyed well either on film or on television.
While doing the play I read some contemporary responses to Wilder’s writing and opening the original play. They were fascinating. As I remember Josh Logan’s “Josh” was one of the books I read that touched on it.