Our Town: Overdone

It was the quintessential Peterborough experience: dinner at Harlow’s, a walk up Vale Street and around several little side streets, through a wooded path alongside the Nubanusit and emerging back into town via Putnam Grove. Then up to the Peterborough Players to see Our Town.

Until a few moments beforehand, I hadn’t given much thought to the play I was going to be seeing. I had seen at least twice before at the same venue. When I first came to Peterborough in 1975 a friend of mine knew Fletcher Dole, the dairy farmer who Thornton Wilder used as  a model for Howie Newsome, the milkman. So, like everyone around here, I gradually came to appreciate that there were connections, some solid, and some speculative, between Our Town and Peterborough. I also dimly recalled some philosophical and spiritual components of the play that transcended location.

Mostly, I was looking forward to being entertained. This year, for the first time, my wife and I indulged in season tickets, and we’ve taken great pleasure in every show to date (though we’ve noted that the plays that provide for a lot of laughter were for some reason all put in the first half of the summer). It’s always interesting to see an actor from a previous show play a very different part, but in spite of recognizing them in this way, every show to date was absorbing enough so that we felt brought into the story and could forget we were just watching a play.

I felt right away that was going to be different as James Whitmore took the stage in his highly publicized role as the narrator. This entrance was greeted with huge applause by the well-primed audience. It is certainly not Mr. Whitmore’s fault that his brilliant acting skills have earned him celebrity status here, but I felt like we were watching the narrator playing James Whitmore playing the narrator; his performance was laced with excessive facial expressions and movements that seemed a bit too forced, too deliberate.

This feeling was reinforced by an unevenness in the mix of characters. Karron Graves was very compelling as Emily Webb, but the intensity of her performance felt awkward against the more routine (though perfectly capable) work of her fellow actors. The eccentric outbursts from Mrs. Soames (played by Katie Clark) also seemed a bit over the edge – something that might have worked in another play, but not terribly credible here.  Dee Nelson as Mrs. Gibbs provided a subtle steadfast energy that for me anchored the entire production.

Add to this the accents: not that there is one right way to speak rustic New Hampshire. Indeed we wouldn’t expect that Dr. Gibbs, who, by virtue of his having been out in the world enough to get his credentials, would shape his words in the same way as Howie Newsome. But the variety seemed more the result of the actors trying too hard for effect, and since some of the smaller parts were rendered with no attempt at an accent, it made those that were even more conspicuous.

Leaving the theater, I pondered the absence of satisfaction I was feeling. Could it be that this year’s other plays have all been just so excellent, that at some point disappointment was inevitable? Perhaps that’s part of it, but I realized that during the entire show, I was always aware that I was watching actors. In spite of their intention, I never felt fully invited into “Our Town.”

Writing about  a Peterborough Players production of this play in 1993, The New York Times quoted the Players’ actor Robert Alvin (who was playing the constable that year, but who had rendered several other parts during his illustrious career), as saying: “The only thing you have to watch in ‘Our Town’ is you can’t overdo anything – it’s all there in Wilder’s writing.”

I would have to agree; in this case, a little less effort might have been more rewarding.