Producing oft-staged Our Town ‘scary’
Blue Bridge artistic director says audience familiarity with classic play raises expectations
When you consider the hoops Brian Richmond has had to leap through to keep Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre afloat, it’s no wonder he has developed a reputation for being fearless.
It comes as something of a surprise, then, to hear the professional theatre company’s artistic director use words like “scary” to describe the experience of directing Our Town, its revival of the Thornton Wilder classic.
“Of the 150 productions that I have directed, this is definitely one of the most terrifying I’ve ever done,” he says.
Yet Richmond is no stranger to the play, which is set in the fictional town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, and explores love, loss, hope and disappointment in small-town America from 1901-1913.
Back in the 1960s, at age 16, Richmond played George Gibbs in a New Westminster community theatre production of Our Town.
“It’s one of the first plays I ever did,” Richmond said. “There is an echo of this play in me.”
Richmond has become intimately familiar with the text and seen several productions over the years, including a recent Canadian College of Performing Arts student production he enjoyed.
Still, it’s a huge theatrical challenge.
“It’s such a complex mix of the simple and profound that it’s very hard to get the right balance,” he said.
Part of the reason, he said, is that audiences have become so familiar with Wilder’s frequently produced classic.
Also heightening expectations is the fact Our Town was selected by theatregoers who voted on potential productions for the 2017 “People’s Choice” season.
For the production, Richmond assembled a cast of 19 actors and musicians, headlined by First Nations stage and screen actor Gary Farmer as the Stage Manager. Farmer, best known to filmgoers for his role as Nobody opposite Johnny Depp in the Jim Jarmusch classic Dead Man, was a natural choice to play the character who narrates the play’s action, Richmond said.
“Gary has incredible emotional power and a stillness that I’m thrilled to hear applied to the great words of Wilder,” said Richmond, who also directed Farmer when he played Lenny in Blue Bridge’s 2012 production of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.
The Our Town cast pairs some of the capital region’s most seasoned artists with emerging newcomers, including Grace Vukovic as Emily Webb and Julien Bruce as her soulmate, George Gibbs.
Their co-stars include Brian Linds and Cyllene Richmond as Dr. and Mrs. Gibbs, and Michael Armstrong and Shauna Baird as Mr. and Mrs. Webb. Rounding out the large cast are Jack Harris Bruce, Julian Cervello, who played Wally Webb in a production 17 years ago, Ellis Frank, Sheldon Graham, Malcolm Harvey, Chase Hiebert, Dean Ifill, Jana Morrison, RJ Peters, Jacob Richmond and Lucy Sharples.
As well as deciding to cast 19 speaking roles, Richmond opted to shift the play’s soundscape from Congregational organ and choralbased orchestrations to a northern Appalachian musical approach. “We’re very fortunate to have Sarah Tradewell, an enormously talented violin, fiddle and viola player, as our music director and we’ve created a bit of an Appalachian band onstage,” he said.
The music and drama will be complemented by movement and choreography by Treena Stubel, who has choreographed Our Town in the past.
Technical contributions include sets and costumes by Patricia Reilly, lighting by Giles Hogya, sound and projections by Jason King and dialect coaching by Iris MacGregor Bannerman.
Richmond says it doesn’t surprise him that Our Town has had so many revivals, including recent productions in London, New York and Toronto, and a Shaw Festival reboot. “It truly is an extraordinary, beautifully written play,” he said. “I think it’s one of the top American plays of the 20th century. It’s right up there with Death of a Salesman and A Streetcar Named Desire.”