I wonder what director Ricardo Vila-Roger would have done if I’d shown up at his rehearsals for Thornton Wilder’s Our Town at University of Pittsburgh Stages and changed his direction: putting the actors in period-appropriate clothing, perhaps reverting the random lines he translated into Spanish back into English, or maybe helping the cast understand that every character in the play was born in the 1800s and wouldn’t be striking poses and attitudes from 21st-century sitcoms.
I imagine Vila-Roger would have tossed me out on my ear. And yet any such alteration of his work would pale in comparison to what’s he’s done with Wilder’s. Vila-Roger has had no compunction taking Our Town and deciding he’d … what? Make it better? More relevant? Speak to the iPhone generation?
We should not demand that great works of art adapt themselves to our little lives. Great work insists that we inhabit its world as a way to examine our own. Our Town, a masterpiece, shows us the small comings and goings in a tiny New Hampshire town, and from its intense specificity, it illuminates the chaos of the universe and the infinitesimal nature of being. Our Town implores us to recognize that life doesn’t need meaning or purpose or bigness to be precious. Vila-Roger seems to have been so focused on making his voice heard he’s all but obliterated Wilder’s.
I regret sounding so harsh: Vila-Roger is an actor with an impressive résumé of astonishing performances, and when it comes to bulldozing a playwright’s work, I’ve seen far worse and far more arrogant. But I felt cheated sitting at an Our Town having nothing to do with Thornton Wilder.
It’s a large cast set adrift on stage, and while all of them work in a loud, nuance-free comedy style at odds with the unadorned melancholy of the script, Julia de Avilez Rocha brings a compelling, engaging presence as the Stage Manager, and Maya Boyd is sincere and deeply moving with Emily’s third-act catharsis.
I appreciate that Vila-Roger is a highly skilled theater artist looking to make a statement. But to quote Edward Albee’s take on visionary directors: “Write your own damn play.”
This article appears in Oct 11-17, 2017.
It is my understanding that Spanish was spoken in the 1800s. Why is that a problem for you? Direct translation of a play which has been translated into many languages seems Like it would only be a problem for someone who doesnt like brown people. Why do you have a problem with brown people?
City Paper needs to hold Ted Hoover accountable for this morally reprehensible and completely unprofessional review. This isn’t the first time. He is misogynistic and racist. This is why it’s important to have reviewers of color.
Wow, this is a university production, and a showcase for upcoming local talent. What an unfair and small-minded review. I found the performances to be poignant and moving.
I didn’t come here for an opinion piece on the nature of theatre as an at form. Thanks for devoting a whopping 1 sentence to review of the performance.
I would have to question the reviewers understanding of Our Town and Wilders purpose in writing the play. Wilder wanted to portray universal and eternal themes. For a theme to truly be universal and eternal it cannot be constrained by time and place. But that is exactly what the reviewer is advocating for. What was it that the reviewer was really objecting to? That the Gibbs were a mixed race couple? That George Gibbs was portrayed as a white boy and Emily Webb as a black girl? Or was it that Emily Webb had two Moms? None of that is essential to the themes that Our Town presents. The whole idea is that the play Our Town is actually your Town or anyones Town. That is what makes it a timeless classic that could be performed by Tibetans dressed as hula girls in a town in Wyoming yet would still ring true!
I usually agree with Ted Hoover and have found him a good guide, except that he hates Shakespeare and Rodgers and Hammerstein. But this review is an exception. The actors did a lovely job considering that they are all young and dewy; the blocking was excellent and smoothly executed; and I thought the set was brilliant–flat and minimal until the last act, when it opened up and was detailed and rich–like Emily’s view of the living, really seeing the world.
It seems to me that the author is not very familiar with Thornton Wilder, his life, his intentions, and his body of work. It’s a correct read to say that Wilder used the specific to address the universal (which I’d argue this production has done to great effect). Wilder was also a blazing social critic, a polyglot, and a very modern thinker who frequently employed multicultural characters and multiple languages in his plays to glean the universal from the specific, most notably in The Skin of Our Teeth. He also vehemently rejected the theatrical realism–a viewpoint deeply against the grain for his time–that Hoover seems so convinced is mistakenly missing from this production. It never surprises me to hear people who read Our Town once in high school to ascribe Wilder’s work and intentions to a 19th-century postcard of white pastoral America, but it does surprise me to hear this interpretation from a theater critic. Wilder was always one of the most forward-thinking of American writers who very much intended a socially relevant bent to his work — so much so that the best of his work was greatly misunderstood and/or underperformed during his lifetime. It does a great disservice to his vision to consign his work to static history now that he’s gone.
It might be noted that the Wilder estate has authorized a tri-lingual production of Our Town in English, Creole (translated by Jeff Augustin) and Spanish (translated by Nilo Cruz), which opens next week at Miami New Drama.
If the Wilder estate has no problem with the play breaking out of its period piece trappings, why should anyone else?
I wonder what Hoover would have thought about David Cromer’s luminous non-period version, which was the longest-running ever production of Our Town.