Our Town

This is the 75^th anniversary of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. Hence, everybody’s doing it: it’s playing at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, as well as three Portland theaters. It was the third most produced full-length play in high schools last year. And yet, Southern Oregon University’s auditorium was only about two thirds full, while the devised piece next door was sold out.

Director Paul Barnes cites an unnamed “many” who consider Our Town to be “the great American play.” Why, then, doesn’t it pack them in?

Our Town is the dream of American conservatism: to take the idolization of Main Street and the insularity it represents and cover the earth with it. It takes the mystique of the American small-town, the simplicity of a bygone era, and explodes this nostalgia to universal proportions. Wilder’s universalization of historicized white American culture smacks of Manifest Destiny. For example, Professor Willard’s historical prologue spans millions of years. His mention of the indigenous inhabitants of the area serves only to underpin Caucasian claim to the land: the Indians were not there that long; they have entirely disappeared; if anything’s left of them, it’s an implied secret in three families’ genealogy.

The paradox is that Our Town maintains an inordinate amount of American stage time by playing into fantasies of American universalism, and yet it can’t compete with the unknown devised piece White Fugue next door. Do I think Our Town should be abandoned? No, Wilder has something to say about white American conservatism, and he really says it beautifully. Should it be done less? Well, we’re not all white conservatives, are we?

Liquid Plain

I went to Naomi Wallace’s Liquid Plain with high hopes. After all, Wallace is one of today’s most famous American playwrights. I left disappointed – my hopes had been drowned in a sea of clumsy playwrighting. 

Plays about slavery in America are in vogue right now, and it felt like Wallace was trying to tap into that for her installment in OSF’s American History Cycle. Wallace seemed to be tackling every single story she felt hadn’t been told about slavery in America yet, and this made the play feel unfocused. She fell into the amateur playwright trap of too much exposition and too much concern for her own prose at the expense of the play’s actability. Otherwise capable actors struggled with Liquid Plain’s seemingly endless litany of expository walls of text.

The weight of failure rests mostly on Wallace’s shoulders – such a renowned playwright should be expected not to present something so unfinished. But, since the dramaturg’s work appeared with such clarity in the copious research that clearly went into Liquid Plain, dramaturg Julie Felise Dubiner also shares the blame. As a new play development dramaturg, her job wasn’t just to provide the playwright with a plethora of stories to write about. Her job was also to encourage Wallace to focus, to find the story that compelled her and then provide research to help her dig into that. Both playwright and dramaturg finished about half their job, and then put Liquid Plain on the boards. Another year in development and Liquid Plain might be ready for an audience, but it wasn’t this season.