Our Town written by Thornton Wilder
Queensland Theatre
Billie Brown Theatre
Director Lee Lewis
30th Jan- 20th Feb 2021
Dr Gemma Regan
Bring Back the Comedy!
The excitement of returning to live theatre in 2021 rippled through the packed Billie Brown theatre at the opening night of Queensland Theatre’s production of the Pulitzer Prize Winning Our Town. The surprised audience were plunged into darkness and silenced, leaving small pools of illumination as people wrestled to switch off their phones. Fortunately, the dark pause was sufficient for all to appreciate the stillness of the night in Grover’s Corners in small town America, New Hampshire. Gradually dawn revealed an incongruous post-apocalyptic scene of a black stage with a few incidental chairs, boxes and crates scattered amongst depressed looking actors sheathed in masks.
Jimi Bani (Hedda, My name is Jimi) was excellent with a soft fruitful voice acting as the Stage Manager and narrator for the play, introducing characters and describing the imaginary layout of the town. Thornton Wilder stated that the play was to have no set to hit the reset button on the massive Broadway productions of the 1930’s, needing only good words and actors. However, director Lee Lewis’ interpretation of the first act was depressing, slow and tedious, with actors pretending to volunteer themselves for each part whilst shifting chairs and boxes to recreate each scene.
It became excruciating and seemed endless, reminiscent of watching a school introductory Drama lesson and causing many restless audience members, including myself. As an introduction to the 2021 season, it was a strange choice to bore the audience into submission with a tedious crawl through the opening of a renowned play. One brief highlight of the first of three acts was the large cast of fourteen masked Australian actors elbow bumping each other in greeting, fixing the modern day actors into the setting of 1901 mid-America.
Our Town focuses on the relationship between two neighbouring families bonded by the evolving love between two teenagers. George Gibbs was played confidently by Jayden Popick, who was the star of QT’s late 2020 production of Mouthpiece and he continued to shine as George, a typical teenager discovering who he should become. Lucy Heathcote debuted as Emily his neighbour and attractive friend. The two developed a convincing synergy throughout Act 2, Love and Marriage, with the Stage Manager Jimi Bani extending his role to the sceptical minister. Roxanne McDonald (Mother Courage and Her Children) was the effervescent and eccentric Mrs Soames, providing the much needed comical relief, wearing a wild hat and repeatedly commenting to the audience what a lovely wedding it was!
The audience needed tissues at the ready for the particularly poignant and moving Act 3, Death. Set in the town’s graveyard in 1913, it was a difficult scene to watch whilst a pandemic rips through the World’s population. Wilder claimed that “the climax of this play needs only five square feet of boarding and the passion to know what life means to us.” 2020 has brought us all a little closer to the fragility of our own mortality.
The quote by the ghosts of “How in the dark live person’s are!” should be attributed to Queensland Theatre’s inconsiderate choices of their returning productions, which have been so depressing! They have ignored the opportunity for an audience to be relieved of the stresses of 2020 and 2021 through joyful live theatre. Instead by returning with themes of child suicide in Mouthpiece, in a time of record suicides amongst disillusioned teenagers, and The Holidays and Our Town focused on death, seems incredibly insensitive to the World situation and the needs of the audience!
The Queensland Theatre’s interpretation of Wilder’s Our Town was also far too long at 2 hours and 45 minutes and would not have needed two non-socially distanced, crowded intervals with extensive bar and female toilet queues, if the banal beginning had been cut.
Our Town was well acted but will further depress the Queensland Theatre audiences, rather than providing some much needed escapism, bring back the comedy!