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.
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“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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