Keeping Up With Our
Theatre Special Needs
By TONY VELLELA
Keep up-to-date on the where’s and when’s. The Broadway League has announced that the best version of what’s coming in the weeks and months ahead for the re-opening of the Broadway season puts the opening some time after the July 4 weekend, and it is possible that the industry will not open until after Labor Day. In regard to the concluded abbreviated season’s bestowing of the Tonys, no definite plan has emerged to stage a ceremony and the presentation of the awards. Two shows slated to open for consideration have already been cancelled, and will not be opening once the ban has been lifted. Those shows are “Hangman” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
In the meantime, those of us who need to keep our connection alive with theatre in general, there are a few options to consider. For example, the first Broadway-level podcast musical “Little Did I Know,” featuring the music of three-time Tony Award winner Doug Besterman [‘The Producers,” “Thoroughly Modern Millie”] along with lyrics by Oscar and Golden Globe winner Dean Pitchford [“Fame, “ “Footloose”] and Marcy Heisler [“Ever After”], and book by New York Times best-selling author Lou Aronica, with Johanna Besterman is available via a link for all episodes, which are being released every Tuesday through Tuesday, May 12. It features Richard Kind, Lesli Margherita, Patrick Page, Laura Murano, Casey Breves, Sam Tsui and Kurth Hugo Schneider. For details, go to Little Did I Know. Enjoy!
AfterPlay – –
If you calculate the amount of time it takes to straighten up the place, get in the car or train or bus, get to the theatre, get seated, see the play [90 minutes to 150 minutes, generally] then the getting-there in reverse, more than four hours are spent enjoying the viewing of a play. Slice that in half, and use that ‘found’ time that we are all living with during these crisis days, and take advantage of it as something we can use to enhance our theatre-going experience for these coming weeks ahead. Proposal: use that time to explore aspects of a familiar play that you have always loved, but never really dug deeply into. This time: Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.’’
When the David Cromer-helmed production closed at the Barrow Street Theatre off-Brodway on 12/16/09, it raked up the longest-running production in the play’s 72-year history, having been presented for 644 performances.
For a start, look at how Wilder titled his beloved work. He calls it “OUR Town,” meaning it is a shared space, one that is meant to include everyone, regardless of where we live, when we live or how we live. It is a mutual experience: “Our.” Not “THE Town,” or “A Town,” or even “SOME Town.” It is the universal shared town that we all have a connection to. We are part of it, and we have lived there, or will. The inhabitants are a universal admixture of types, of professions, of family backgrounds, and a common level of education, in this instance, high school graduates. Those who venture off to college are more than likely bound to return to the town to live out their lives with friends, family, neighbors and spouses known to each other since birth. A stranger is the object of conjecture, though not in a suspicious manner. And those with a more extended educational experience are likely to hold a position of note. Listen to Simon Stimson, the church organist, who mostly disguises his distain for the lack of intellectual curiosity among the townsfolk in regard to classical music, when he states “these fools don’t appreciate good music.” And note that it is Simon, a graduate of a music conservatory that led him to his position at the church, who is discovered wondering the streets at night by the constable, who does not question why Simon is out alone at night, not considering the reasons for his late-night activities. Is he secretly meeting someone from another town? We don’t know. What we do know is that he is troubled to the point of taking his own life [hanging himself] that shocks the town, but the people in town always looked on him as a marginal outsider.
And death is no stranger to this town, and to this play. Despite its reputation as a pastoral, bucolic haven tucked away in the hills, Grover’s Corners has its fair share of dark elements. It is often chosen as a high school play for students to put on, but its deeper inside story lines have their own emphatic depressing sides. Besides Simon, it is Mrs. Gibbs, George’s mother, who dies from pneumonia while away visiting her sister, and young Wally, the paper boy, who dies when his appendix bursts. The most empathic death is that of Emily, the central female character – Emily, married at seventeen, dead at twenty-six.
This is a close-knit community, the kind you sort of wish you were a part of. When editor Webb suspects that his son is secretly smoking behind the high school, he implores constable Warren to let him know if he sees this transgression. He tells him “if you see my boy smoking, tell him to stop. He thinks a lot of you.”
Back-and-forth correspondence exists between Wilder and film producer Sol Lesser, trying to decide how to end the picture version, given Lesser’s belief that America’s great middle and lower classes would not accept having Emily die. Wilder was at first adamant about keeping his original stage version, but came around to Lesser’s persuasive argument that they would still love the story if she were to go into some sort of coma, and pull out of it, which is the compromise that Wilder eventually agreed to. So the motion picture wound up showing Emily lapsing into a deep dark sleep after the birth of her child, only to come out of it in the final moments. Happy Ending.
Delving into the layers of meaning and relationships in our favorite plays can be very rewarding, and make the viewing or the reading of them, or the motion picture transfers, all the more enhanced. Give yourself a real theatre treat and choose a favorite work tonight instead of another sitcom rerun.
Off Book –
A comprehensive collection of Wilder’s most significant plays can be found in “Three Plays: “Our Town,” “The Skin of Our Teeth,” and “The Matchmaker.” Published by Harper & Row, it includes a preface by the playwright and critical material by Travis Bogard. The same work can be found in a paperback version from Avon Books. These collections include his “Matchmaker,” which went on to several afterlives, including a musical adaptation, and then the Broadway box office smash “Hello, Dolly!” to be followed by the film version of the same name, which suffered from the wildly miscast Barbra Streisand in the title role – too young, too snarky.
TONY VELLELA wrote and produced the PBS series about theatre “Character Studies” for PBS. His play “Admissions” received a Best Play Award at the New York International Fringe Festival, and enjoyed three separate New York off-Broadway productions, all directed by Austin Pendleton, and is published by Playscripts. His play “Maisie Drags Grover to the Theatre” is published by ArtAge.Publications. He has written three books, hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles, taught at several institutions including Columbia University’s Teacher’s College and HB Studio. His play “Labor Days” is slated to be produced off-Broadway in the fall.
CARMEL CAR & LIMOUSINE SERVICE, in business since 1978, has been selected as the official transportation company for Intermission Talk. Its wide variety of services, including special theatre packages, and reservations, are available at carmellimo.com, the Carmel App, or at 212 – 666 – 6666.
=================================================================