Our Town

Citizens of Everywhere

Our Town

by Thornton Wilder

Welsh National Theatre at the Rose Theatre, Kingston until 28^th March

Review by Patrick Shorrock

This is one of those magical evenings when words, actors, movement, music, sound and lighting all fuse together to create theatre at its finest. This is a production that completely enchants its audience. It’s not simply that all the constituent parts work well, but that they combine together and reinforce each other, which makes it pleasurably impossible to locate where the magic lies, as everyone contributes to the spell.

To start with, there is Thornton Wilder’s quietly astonishing play that finds something wonderful in the ordinary without making a fuss about it. Wilder is best known as the author of The Matchmaker, the play that inspired the glorious musical Hello, Dolly. But he does something rather less feel-good and more weighty here, whilst still moving with the grace and lightness of touch of an instinctive man of the theatre.

I’d been expecting something a bit cute and cosy, with self-congratulatory folksiness off the scale, but it’s not like that at all. It’s much quieter and more ambivalent than that: the fragility and unpredictability of life is observed and noticed but without any preaching or sentimentality. These lives are of the lad who wins a scholarship but is killed during World War One; the school sweethearts who get married but are both paralysed with fear before the wedding; the organist who ‘has seen a peck of troubles’ although the reason for his suicide is never disclosed.

This play makes more connections than Clapham Junction – both between the individuals living in this small town and between significant but barely regarded moments throughout the years, that acquire a charged resonance especially when strict chronological sequence is disrupted by glimpses forward and flashbacks.

Even Brecht would be impressed by the quantity of lightly worn intertextuality that illuminates rather than alienates, with the play set in the actual theatre where it is being performed. The stage manager of the theatre is the protagonist, directly addressing the audience and playing some of the roles himself. It could so easily be mannered and self-conscious, but somehow it never is. It is less easy-going than it looks. Act Three soberly confronts us with the reality of death and the cruel gulf between the dead and living

Wilder insisted that Our Town “should be performed without sentimentality or ponderousness — simply, dryly, and sincerely” and that is exactly what it gets here. A series of planks and a collection of chairs, inventively deployed, do a huge amount of work and get us using our imaginations in a way that more lavish designs never would. Designers Hayley Grindle (sets and costumes) and Ryan Joseph Stafford (lighting) achieve a beautiful intensity out of very little, aided by Dyfan Jones’s music and sound design and Jess Williams’ movement. Director Francesca Goodridge unobtrusively co-ordinates everything into a harmonious whole.

Michael Sheen completely inhabits the role of the Stage Manager without the need to inject extra charisma or expressiveness. It is also worth paying tribute to him for launching Welsh National Theatre, after the Arts Council ceased funding National Theatre Wales. It is hard to imagine a better start than this wonderful show. Yasemin Ozdemir and Peter Devlin are a charming pair of young lovers in the other main roles, but there is almost something wrong about naming anyone from this superb company, as this isn’t about big star performances, but that much rarer, more exciting event, when a whole ensemble is working completely together.

The play has been transposed to Wales, but it is also still small-town America, with talk of dollars and references to New Hampshire, but a bit of Welsh colour also added. (I assume that was the contribution of Russell T Davies, who is described as a creative associate.)

This may be a hymn to the local, but it’s simultaneously Welsh and American without it jarring, which shows how its emphasis is on universal human experience everywhere: learning to love, to be kind, to value the moment, to make human connections, to become a responsible adult, to bring up children, to deal with loss. There is nothing smug or excluding about this community.

Our Town is a reminder that America used to have a heart at a time when it knew – to quote from the book to Hello, Dolly! – that money is like muck: only any use when it is spread around to make things grow.

I’m slightly embarrassed at the way that I’m gushing about Our Town, but it reminds me of the importance of appreciating the moment, and taking the trouble to express the joy and gratitude you feel rather than bottling it up out of embarrassment if someone will benefit from it. After all, I’m not doing this just to be nice to the wonderful cast and creative team, or to praise Thornton Wilder, but because I want as many people as possible to see this marvellous show.

Patrick Shorrock, March 2026

Photography by Helen Murray