[NEohioPAL] Review of "Our Town" at the Shaw Festival

[Bob Abelman via NEohioPAL]

Shaw Festival’s ‘Our Town’ hits home



Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics



The poignancy of Thornton Wilder’s 1938 classic “Our Town” – that is, its ability to inspire reflection on what the show’s narrator refers to as the “way we were in our growing-up and in our marrying, and in our living, and in our dying” – is particularly present in this Shaw Festival production.  



In part, this is because the flower lined streets of historic Niagara-on-the-Lake just outside the playhouse entry bear uncanny resemblance, in disposition and design, to the early 1900s New Hampshire town of Grover’s Corners so beautifully described by the play’s Stage Manager (the gently authoritative Benedict Campbell).  



It’s not just the summer humidity that hits you hard upon leaving the conditioned air of the theater; it’s the nostalgic reverie hitting home while walking through a living, breathing Grover’s Corners equivalent. 



But mostly, it’s the artistic vision of director Molly Smith and the outstanding performances of the ensemble cast that bring out the overriding innocence that permeates this play and all the emotion we attach to that quality. 



For more of this review, go to www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/. 
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