Our Town – Camden People’s Theatre, London

Writer: Thornton Wilder

Director: Kate Gorman

Musical Director: Danny Atkinson

Reviewer: Carol Evans

The Public Reviews Rating:

A clothes rail was central stage and the cast were still changing, doing each other’s hair, singing, chatting and hugging each other. Were we in the auditorium or the backstage changing room of Camden People’s Theatre? It all seemed fairly chaotic, but then seamlessly the rail disappeared, the play’s ‘set’ – a couple of small tables and chairs – was brought on and we were off.

When Thornton Wilder wrote what has now become an American classic in the 1930s, he was well before his time in stage design and direction. He believed actors were constrained by the conventional trappings and stipulated that the play should be performed with no set and minimal props, with the actors using mime to portray objects and their usage.

So, we see them stringing and chopping imaginary beans, eating imaginary food and a milkman pulling along an imaginary horse as he delivers imaginary milk and cream. Ladders are used to depict upper storeys of the town’s houses. You get the picture? And the St Savio(u)rs’ young cast does it all so well, it makes you wonder why we ever need to bother with props and scenery!

The play is essentially a portrait of day-to-day life in a small town. Wilder has set his play in Grover’s Corners in New England, but really its theme is universal and, by focusing on the ordinary incidents that makes life tick, Grover’s Corners is a microcosm that could be any town anywhere in the world.

The action takes place between1901 and 1913 and follows the lives of the town’s inhabitants through their childhood, marriage and death. Its focus is mainly on the story of high school baseball star George Gibbs, the son of Dr and Mrs Gibbs and his future wife Emily, the pretty, intelligent daughter of newspaper editor Charles Webb and his wife Myrtle. But during the course of their emerging love, marriage and, ultimately Emily’s death, we are introduced to more of Grover’s Corners’ characters and so are able to flesh out our overall picture of the neighbourhood.

The play uses a clever device in using a Stage Manager as narrator, here played with tremendously convincing authority by Katie Castles, who guides the audience through the happenings of Grover’s Corner. She describes the town, its streets, its inhabitants, occasionally stopping the play’s action to give characters’ backstories –the alcoholic choirmaster, Mrs Gibb’s unfulfilled desire to travel – so we know exactly what is going on.

Using a completely black stage, director Kate Gorman had chosen not to use projections or any other theatrical device to denote various locations, challenging the audience to add their own colour and imaginations through her actors and music. And it worked. I was immediately immersed in this very engaging play and suffice to say that the 85-minute first half flew by.

There were some splendid characterisations among the cast, all of whom were on top form. Michael Totton was a lovable George Gibbs – his deflated facial expression while being berated by his dad for not chopping wood was a picture. Zoe Swenson-Graham was appealing as his girlfriend and later wife Emily. Amy O’Dwyer was a warm-hearted Mrs Gibbs. Lydia Outhwaite gave a spirited performance in her dual role of daughter Rebecca and Mrs Soames..

By concentrating on the seemingly insignificant, trivia of everyday living, the play’s author challenges us to think about what is important in life: companionship, family love, the sun going down, the smell of flowers. This is brought home in the last very atmospheric and affecting Act, entitled Death, when Emily, returning to earth for one day on her 12th birthday, realises how much the little things that she never before noticed, really mattered. “Live people, they just don’t understand, do they?” she says on her return to the cemetery.

This Act could well have been fully of syrupy sweetness and sentimentality, but it’s testament to this exciting cast of young actors, that it was not. A splendid production.