Westsiders in particular and Angelenos in general are lucky to have two wonderful revivals of great American plays up and running – David Cromer’s original vision of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town at Broad Stage and Phylicia Rashad’s Ovation-winning A Raisin in the Sun at the Kirk Douglas.
I’m going to postpone additional remarks about A Raisin in the Sun until next week, when I can also comment on the CTG production of A Raisin in the Sun’s sorta-sequel Clybourne Park, which opens Wednesday at the Taper. Meanwhile, my earlier words about the original Ebony Rep production of Raisin in the Sun at the Nate Holden – which has more or less been imported for the Douglas production – are here.
Helen Hunt in "Our Town"
On to Our Town. In some ways, I feel as if I’m always going back to Our Town. As a kid, I was in a high school production of it, playing the role of Simon Stimson – the church choir director, town drunk and eventual suicide. Before I was born, my father appeared in an Our Town, and after I was grown, so did my daughter. I quoted from the play at a memorial service for my father.
At the time of my Simon Stimson performance, I was a real-life choirboy, so I was probably good enough in the scene in which Simon’s rehearsing the choir. But back then, I doubt that I had ever tasted a drop of alcohol, and I’m certain that I had little understanding of anyone who might kill himself. So in the scene where Simon walks through the town after choir practice, I probably overdid his stagger. I can only imagine how I must have looked and sounded as I tried to muster the requisite anger and despair for Simon’s cynicism in the third act.
Fortunately, my performance not only pre-dated YouTube but also pre-dated the widespread use of home video cameras.
Of course I’ve also seen probably a half-dozen professional Our Towns in my career, much of which has been devoted to writing about theater. So with all this history with the play, it’s difficult for me to anticipate that any new production will be all that original.
James McMenamin, Jennifer Grace and Ronete Levenson
But Cromer’s is. Much of this is due to the physical layout. On a platform that’s atop the Broad’s usual seats, most of the audience sits on three sides of a long, cylindrical space, with wooden flooring. During most of the play, the actors occupy not only the central space but also an extra-wide gap between the first and second rows of seating. Some additional action takes place at the one open end on the north side of the room. The choir rehearsal takes place on the south end, in part of the balcony, which also contains extra audience seating.
For reasons unknown to me, I was seated in the balcony, unlike most of the other critics. At first I thought the main advantage of the balcony was that its seats are the Broad originals, which appear to be considerably more comfortable than the temporary chairs that most of the audience used. But I was worried that I wouldn’t share the same sense of intimacy that most of the downstairs audience had – especially those who were in the first two rows, where the actors often were only a few feet away.
It’s true that I didn’t get a close-up look at the actors, but I certainly heard most of their words. On the other hand, as the play kept going, I realized that the balcony offered compensations other than the padding on the seats and the proximity to the choir rehearsal scene.
My bird’s-eye view of most of the action in Grover’s Corners provided a much wider perspective than could be obtained from any of the lower seats. In fact, I wondered how some of those in the first or second rows could see certain scenes without a lot of neck craning.
Lori Myers and Jeff Still
The third act, set primarily in the town cemetery, brought a startling realization — for those of us who were in the balcony as well as for those down below. Cromer has the actors bring on chairs that more or less fill the central space and even the aisles in between the first and second rows. Most productions of Our Town show no more than eight of 10 deceased people in their chairs, waiting for something eternal to kick in, but this one offered at least 20, probably two dozen. For those who were below us, seated near the living dead, it’s possible that this would provide the somewhat eerie sensation that they were only one step away from the dead.
From the vantage point of the balcony, however, the actors’ seats soon began to merge with the audience seats, so that it looked as if everyone on the entire platform – audience members as well as actors – was indeed one of the “dead”. It was like looking at an overflowing graveyard where the headstones are packed side by side right up to the edge. It imparted an overwhelming sense of the sheer numbers of the dead who have preceded us down that path. Coincidentally enough, after seeing this on Wednesday, I spent part of Saturday at a graveside service for a friend who died too young – and some of the headstones in that cemetery were so tightly packed that they were only a couple feet from the road.
I’m going to issue a spoiler alert here. Of the many reviews of this production that are already online, the ones that I’ve read manage not to reveal what happens in the scene in which the recently deceased Emily revisits her family on the occasion of a long-ago birthday. But I’ve decided to describe it, because it’s one of the best things about the production. If you haven’t seen this Our Town and you want to be surprised by every aspect of it, skip the next paragraph.
Until this moment, Cromer meticulously avoids any suggestion from the sets or the costumes that we’re back in the early 1900s, which is when Wilder’s characters supposedly existed. Everything looks up-to-date in this Grover’s Corners — at least in terms of the costumes (there is hardly any set at all). But suddenly, as Emily visits her own past, a new mini-stage appears on the north end of the room, and it has a set that looks like a household kitchen from that era. The survivors in Emily’s family are suddenly dressed in period costumes. Emily wanders into the scene, and it looks strangely distant and obscured to her as well as to us – not only have the set and costumes changed, but the light is directed from the rear of the small stage so that the other characters remain mostly in shadow. From the balcony, I could make out the features of “the dead” – other audience members as well as other actors – better than I could make out the features of the still-living. What a scene!
Jonathan Mastro and David Cromer at the Off-Broadway photo call for the Barrow Street Theatres 2009 production of "Our Town"; Photo by Jemal CountessGetty Images North America
OK, those of you who heeded my spoiler warning, welcome back. As a former Simon Stimson myself, I also have to comment on the remarkable way that Cromer has strengthened this role, which is played by Jonathan Mastro, who is also credited for original music and music direction. Underlying this production are occasional moments in which we hear what Simon plays when the choir isn’t rehearsing, when he’s by himself – and it isn’t “Blest Be the Ties That Bind.” It’s jagged, unsettling modern music of the sort that you probably never would have heard in Grover’s Corners in the early 1900s. Of course, sounds like these fit Simon’s personality. And they lend yet another note of modernity to Cromer’s concept, another counterpoint to the play’s dominant chords of savoring life.
It’s not that Cromer’s concept cancels out the usual rewards of Our Town. It’s that he makes sure the entire expanse of Wilder’s vision is on display – the lows as well as the highs.
You probably know that Helen Hunt plays the Stage Manager, and if think about it, you can see why – she easily projects a dry wit, a droll manner. That, plus the fact that her celebrity probably helped bring this Chicago-originated, New York-continued production to the LA area. If so, all praise to Hunt.
As someone who has wondered why Broad Stage so seldom picks up anything from the LA theater world for the professional programming on its mainstage, I’ve got to acknowledge that this production takes a few small but worthy steps in pursuit of that goal. In some of the roles that aren’t occupied by veterans of the production’s previous incarnations, LA actors fill the gap – and not just on Hunt’s level. For example, David LM McIntyre, co-artistic director of Theatre of NOTE and literary manager of Sacred Fools, plays Professor Willard. Lesley Fera of Pacific Resident Theatre is understudying Hunt while also serving in the chorus.
In other words, there are literally a few people from our town in this Our Town. And if you add the audience members, who are a more essential part of this production than they are in most, quite a few more Angelenos are on stage. This is an Our Town for both our town and for the world at large.
Our Town, Broad Stage, 1310 11th St., Santa Monica. Tue-Fri, 7:30 pm; Sat, 2 and 7:30 pm, Sun 2 pm. Closes Feb 12. 310-434-3200. www.TheBroadStage.com.
***All Our Town production photos by Iris Schneider
VIVA LATC: While the dead in Our Town are waiting to hear what happens next, apparently the Latino Theater Company is trying to figure out what happens now that the City Council has voted to evict the company from Los Angeles Theatre Center.
The only serious reporting I’ve seen on this latest development in LATC’s troubled history is in the Los Angeles Downtown News, where Ryan Vaillancourt’s second article on the subject appeared Friday. That’s the same day that the first LA Times article on the subject appeared.
The Los Angeles Theatre Center
Meanwhile, the Latino Theater board issued a statement late today, saying it “would like to reassure everyone that everything is being done to work constructively and amicably with the City of Los Angeles to resolve any and all issues arising from our current lease situation regarding our home at the Los Angeles Theatre Center.”
The company claims to have “complied with almost every term and condition under our lease with the City of Los Angeles. As an important part of the downtown revitalization, we have spent $4.3 million renovating and restoring the Los Angeles Theatre Center building to its original grandeur, plus invested more than $6 million to create hundreds of jobs, conduct educational programs that help underserved children to participate in summer classes and learn the theater arts and to entertain tens of thousands with critically acclaimed plays…”
“Regardless of the outcome, the Latino Theater Company is committed to its mission of creating world-class theater, producing unique, multi-cultural work that reflects the diverse communities of our great city and providing a place where the voices of some of the most brilliant and talented writers, actors and directors in the world can be heard, and we intend to continue to do so.” The company provided a list of the productions it plans to present in 2012 and asked supporters to contact their City Council members.
I want to hear more details about what happened. Apparently some it has to do with the divorce between Latino Theater and the Latino Museum that had been its partner in the original agreement.
But if the city finds that complying with “almost every term and condition” — whatever that means — isn’t enough, here’s hoping that the city can find another well-heeled operator, perhaps a nonprofit institution, that will allow LATC to remain open not only as a theater but also as a theater that the Latino Theater Company can use, along with many other theater companies.
Latino Theater has done some excellent productions in the last five years, and it has an even longer history with the building, dating back to the LATC company of the late ‘80s. Might it not be better for Latino Theater in the long run if it could concentrate on producing its own work instead of also managing a city-owned facility?
The neighborhood around LATC is so much livelier now than it was in the late ‘80s, when the building opened, that there are many reasons why it should be more capable of thriving as a theater center now than it was back then. Of course the economy has been in the dumps lately, but that won’t last forever.
Long live LATC –- preferably with the Latino Theater Company, but with or without.
TIMES TYPO OF THE WEEK:
Michael Jackson, The Immoral World Tour (yes, in bold-face)
It appeared in the listing in “The Guide” on page E11 in the printed edition of the Sunday Times yesterday. It’s referring, of course, to Michael Jackson, The Immortal World Tour, which was also the subject of the cover story on page E1 of the Arts & Books section Sunday. As the listing notes, the “Immoral” production plays the Honda Center Tuesday and Wednesday and the Staples Center on Friday through Sunday.
I tried to see whether the online listing had corrected the spelling, but as usual, I had a hard time finding the online listing and gave up after several attempts.
