[.ca] Our Town: A Play in Three Acts (ISBN 0060512636)

Review of Thorton Wilder's Our Town:
Thorton Wilder's Our Town is an excellent play for adult and young adult reading. Wilder uses a stage manager to set each scene. He speaks directly to the audience or the reader, helping the reader relate to the story more easily. The stage manager does an excellent job of being descriptive and giving the reader a detailed image of the small town of Grover's Corner, New Hampshire. Our Town is the story of the lives of the citizens of Grover's Corner. The main focus is on the lives of the Gibbs family and the Webb family. The reader experiences the death of family, new life, marriage, and everyday love. This book is a short, simple read that I would recommend reading.

One of those that you HAVE to have a copy of...:
I first saw this play acted out by my high school's drama class...and I loved it. I read the play earlier this year...and loved it again. It's set in Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, and the "stage manager" (narrator) gives you the details of the character's lives. I was glued to this book the entire time...I even cried at the end. Even if you don't like to read plays this is a good one to read. Not only is it one of those books that everyone thinks you should read, it's a good story. I would reccomend this to every high school student who is looking for a break from all the other "literature" we're expected to read, and to everyone else who is just looking for a fairly short, but inspiring read.

Misunderstood classic:
Superficially a folksy, American nostalgia piece, "Our Town" spans the first thirteen years of the twentieth century in the life of Grover's Corners, a small village in rural New Hampshire. It's the archetypal town of the American Mythology. A place where the names on the oldest gravestones are the same as those of the townspeople today. Where the doctor delivers twins before breakfast, and is home in time to shoot the breeze with the paperboy. Where the kids share an ice-cream soda, their mothers sing in the church choir, and a girl grows up and really does marry the boy nextdoor. The play's fond recollection of an America that never existed was nostalgic even in 1938, yet Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama became an instant classic and remains one of America's most loved and frequently performed plays. America today is the shambles of a destroyed hope, the stillborn ruins of the way of life "Our Town" imagines but which in reality was never achieved. For those immune to the appeals of the American Dream, or more familiar with the reality of the American Global Empire, the play may seem deliciously rich in unintended irony. You could be forgiven for thinking the American preference for escapist, self-aggrandizing fantasy might account for its enduring appeal. Yet you would be wrong. Scratch the surface and "Our Town" is no quaint tale of hayseed family life. Wilder was an intellectual, an admirer of the avant-garde and the experimental works of James Joyce. Steadfastly minimalist in its presentation, engagingly postmodern in its insistence that we see the cast as actors rather than characters, and more thematically challenging than we are initially led to expect, "Our Town" is a work of social criticism which indicts us with personal responsibility for the way we see our lives. Wilder turns our nostalgia against us, demolishing our vision of the past as a Golden Age, and demanding we live here and now, simply and fully. The play shows ordinary lives in pursuit of universal meaning, and by confronting us with our own mortality it challenges us to explore our small allotment of years in the same way. This isn't so much a play of memories as a play about memory - private and public. It evokes nostalgia to warn against it, and argues instead for an acceptance of transience, a celebration of life while it is lived, and a recognition of that small, unknowable fragment of the self that is eternal. It's with this universalizing, evident in the final act, that "Our Town" transcends twentieth-century America and becomes an enduringly relevant work of art - one about memory, fantasy, and the power and price of both.

It's a Poignant Life!:
This beloved classic and most frequently performed of Wilder's dramatic works still charms and captivates--despite the decades since its first production in 1938. A simple story, kaleidescopic time (both between and within Acts), basic family values and the modest joys of small town life are the literary elements offered to readers and theatre-goers. Scorning nobles and tradionally heroic figures, Wilder presents ordinary people in the early 20th century--a kinder, gentler time when horses were being phased out in favor of automobiles. But writers will always cherish the natural progression of the seasons of human existence. Why are audiences fascinated by the normal, typical routine in rural New England; what explains the timeless appeal of this simply-plotted story in three acts: Daily Life, Marriage, Death and Aftermath. Perhaps we are haunted by the way the Dead (characters in Act 3) speak about and feel for the Living. Do the residents of the graveyard on the hill reveal painful truths about human life and asperations on earth? Why do the Dead mock those still living as blind and ignorant? What are they patiently, quietly waiting for in their peaceful plots? Is Life just a waste of time, a farce during which we fool ourselves into believing in our own importance? This tale of Americana belongs to all people, regardless of national origin--by virtue of its poignant insight into the human heart.

As satisfying a read as a novel or a book of poetry:
Like many other people who have read this (and loved it!), it was required. Actually, we were required to watch a filmed stage version of it - starring Paul Newman as the Stage Manager. I found it very difficult to watch. I was, along with many other students, very bored watching that production. So, I decided to just read the play. (Reading the play was not required.) It was nothing short of fantastic and amazing. I'm not the kind of person who reads plays and enjoys them. But OUR TOWN read almost like a very reader-friendly novel. And its themes of birth, life, and death have a tendency to reach out and grab the reader like few books I have ever come across. I will definitely be reading this again.