Cherishing life ‘every, every minute’: ‘Our Town’ at 80

“Our Town” has been one of the most popular plays in America and abroad since it had its Broadway premiere on Feb. 4. 1938. But it’s more than a mythical account of a small New Hampshire town in Grover’s Corners beginning in the year 1901. It’s a Pulitzer-Prizewinning play about what life is and should be all about — when you boil it down to basics — and that is what happens not in our possessions, but in our mind values. In three acts, author Thornton Wilder said it all: Daily Life; Love and Marriage; and Death and Eternity.

Of the 10 best American plays cited by critics over the years, “Our Town” is the only one that focuses on the hope and importance of life, whereas the efforts of Arthur Miller “Death of a Salesman,” “The Crucible”), Tennessee Williams (“A Streetcar Named Desire,” “The Glass Menagerie”), Eugene O’Neill (“Long Day’s Journey into Night”), Edward Albee (“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”) or August Wilson (“Fences”) concentrate on the shortcomings of characters who bring ruin to themselves and/or others.

“Our Town” is unique because the stage is essentially bare, the characters mime the objects they deal with, and about the only props on stage are tables, chairs, ladders and staircases. A Stage Manager narrates details about the town, its people and issues, yet still has the opportunity to converse with the audience as well as the play’s characters. So we’re introduced in Act One to the town folk, to wit, the constable, milkman, professor, many others and especially two families, the Webb household, with daughter Emily, and Gibbs family, with son George. Both kids are high-school age, and the day’s regimen in Act One is simply ordinary.

As Act Two focuses on Emily and George as maturing individuals about to decide on marrying each other, stresses and strain emerge. About whether George’s baseball talents should be refined, about farming in place of college, about whether it’s the right time to marry. Discussions abound between parent and offspring about gauging the timing of marriage, but eventually tensions ease and a happy wedding brings the two together.

Nine years later is the setting of the final act, with the Stage Manager bringing attention to the cemetery where several characters have passed away since the wedding. And among the dead is a still-young Emily, who died giving birth to a second child. And in eternity, Emily, along with George’s deceased mother and friends, discuss life, with Emily, against the advice of her comrades, deciding to go back and relive one very special day, her 12th birthday. Yet, it’s so stressful as she returns to Earth — so much so that she asks the Stage Manager: “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it — every, every minute?” “No,” he replies. “The saints and poets — maybe — they do some.” So back to eternity next to her mother-in-law Emily goes, as George kneels in tears by her grave.

“Our Town” has never been a good read for me, but it was always haunting, so when it was announced that Paul Newman would return to Broadway, after a 38-year-hiatus, to play the Stage Manager in a limited run on Broadway in 2002, my late wife and I rushed to get tickets. But the play was sold out in nanoseconds; still, we flew from our Florida home to the Big Apple sans tickets, hoping that a miracle would occur. And it did, getting two prime orchestra seats after numerous unsuccessful trips to the box office.

With Newman at the helm, “Our Town” was one of the most memorable experiences in our lives, even though critics at the time thought his performance and the play in general were just so-so, in large part because the nation has changed so much since 1938 in terms of the prevalence today of big cities and different lifestyles. For Newman was 78 years old at the time (he would pass away six years later), and his I’ve-beenthrough-all-this-before, low-key approach was mesmerizing, undoubtedly illustrating his own background and life.

Newman was small-town America (born and raised in Shaker Heights, Ohio), going to college belatedly, serving in the armed forces, his children growing up under the publicity radar, his acting solid but not meritorious (he won only one Academy Award), his marriage to actress Joanne Woodward totaling 50 years. He was an activist and race-car enthusiast, but with propriety. And his philanthropy — over $500 million since 1982 — still permeates our lives through the Newman line of foods, with total profits directed to charity.

Newman, in short, was our model Stage Manager. His life mirrored an appreciated one, probably agreeing with Emily’s deceased mother-in-law in advising Emily against choosing her 12th birthday to relive again. If you must go back, she said, “at least, choose an unimportant day. Choose the least important day in your life. It will be important enough.”