Under the Direction of Kenny Leon, Broadway Revival of ‘Our Town’ Is a Plea for Harmony in Our Time

Leon’s aim, clearly, is to make us wish for a better world, and as it’s relayed here, that goal doesn’t seem at all incongruous with Thornton Wilder’s vision.

Daniel Rader
Ephraim Sykes, Richard Thomas, and Zoey Deutch in 'Our Town.' Daniel Rader

“Our Town” has been produced on Broadway very few times when you consider the outsize popularity and influence of Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, first staged in 1938. The fifth revival, which opened this week, begins with a twist: As the actors assemble, we hear a melange of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim prayers, performed by the interfaith musical trio Abraham Jam.

As the play’s narrator, the Stage Manager, will soon tell us — and as most of us already know, having seen at least one or two of countless professional and amateur productions — the fictional small town in New Hampshire that Wilder designated as its setting, Grover’s Corners, is almost exclusively Christian: “We’re eighty-five percent Protestants; twelve percent Catholics; rest, indifferent,” he reports.

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