Our Town Rules!

Oh, Dad! I went to see this play last night and it was SO GOOD! It was so, so good. I mean, good.
The Barrow Street Theater (down there on Barrow off 7th) is about to close the longest run of Our Town any theater has ever done and some say, one of the best. Luckily, I got to see it before it ended.
Dad-this theater experience has put anything the Harmoneers and Harmonettes ever did to shame! Yes, I'm including Music Man '76 in that statement. Do you see what I'm talking about here? Whole new level.

First, I'll show you some pictures of my cab ride over there. That's always fun.

Of course you're not allowed to stand there. It's a bus stop.

I'm very impressed by the fact that laborers like these two seem to work around the clock here. I took this picture at 7pm and it seemed like they were just getting started. When my cab stopped at the light, they were arguing loudly about something, which is why I noticed them. The guy on the left was actually yelling with his cigarette hanging out of his mouth- so old school! I wanted to get a picture of that, but I took too long, so what you're seeing here is the moment after. I've noticed New Yorkers don't really think scream-fighting is that a big deal. One second they're furiously arguing about bricks or whatever, the next they're admiring each other's craftsmanship. They get it out and they move on. It's actually very healthy.

When we turned down 8th (I think it was 8th, not positive) I noticed how pretty the sunset was, so I tried to take some pictures of it. These were the best of the bunch...

Not too bad for being taken from a phone in a moving cab.

The driver dropped me off near Barrow St. I think he didn't feel like making a left. So I walked in the wrong direction and ended up making a nice 10 block circle before arriving at the theater. It was shaming and kind of windy, but not unpleasant. Thankfully, I'd allotted myself 15 minutes "lost walking" time and arrived at the front door exactly at 7:30.

Then the really good play started.
And the way they did it was so genius because the house lights were still up and this guy walks in holding up a cell phone and then he just starts talking casually.

Photo: Stolen from the internet.

Everyone assumed it was the real house manager making a real announcement, so we were all only half listening. Everyone was double-checking their phones, some people were still talking a little bit. But about 3 sentences in, we suddenly realized this man was playing the Stage Manager and that Our Town had started. It was so awesome. It got REAL quiet fast.

Photo courtesy of Wikileaks.

This is how they staged it- two kitchen tables at center stage, each representing a household, lined with 2 facing rows of audience members. See that guy in the green blouse? He is NOT in the cast.
In this picture you can see the back balcony where the choir practice scene was going on, weaving in and out of the scene between George and Emily in the foreground. It was lovely and inspired.
(The kids are supposed to be upstairs in their rooms, which is why they're sitting on chairs up on the tables like that. It's an old theater technique. Chairs on tables trick the mind into believing that actors have gone upstairs.)

OK, so those audience members onstage were like the "walls" of the house. Then, there was a walkway behind them, in front of the first row of the regular audience that the actors used as well when they were supposed to be outside or in town or just elsewhere. That makes sense, right? I don't need to continue describing this. It was theater in the round, is all. But the round was square.

I honestly didn't see it coming, but by the end of act three I was sobbing. SOBBING I TELL YOU! I was able to do it very quietly, thank god. Except when I had to wipe the snot running out of my nose. I'm sorry! It's the truth! It was that bad. Luckily, the house lights had finally been brought down and my seat was in the corner, so no one else was made uncomfortable by my emotions.  Just me. I was forced to use every dry inch of both of my shirtsleeves, until I was basically damp from the shoulders down.

It was just acted so beautifully and so naturally, but so clearly. And they did things like, the Stage Manager would say, "You hear that?" And then he'd just listen for like, 15 seconds. Which meant you had to listen for 15 seconds, too. It really felt like something to sit in a room with 150 people and be perfectly silent. All of the timing was very purposeful like that. It made you hang on every word.

I've never seen or read Our Town before, which I know is a travesty as I claim to have been a student of the theater arts. I had this idea that it was kind of serious and dopey, so I never made an effort. Turns out, it's a really beautifully written play. And this cast was so good and so well directed, you believed every moment was real. Right from the very first line!

Here's one of my favorite things the Stage Manager says near the end:

"We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars . . . everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being."