David Cromer Re-envisions Our Town at the Broad, Santa Monica

Thornton Wilder's classic Our Town has been a part of my American cultural mindset since high school, practically all my life. And, of course, being a New Englander, it is not very hard to put myself into Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, even though the time period for the play 1901-1913 is about 30 + years before my existence. People are people and daily life was pretty much the same; things - except cars replacing horse and buggy - didn't really start changing until the middle of the 20th century. Now in this spaced out, high tech, faster-than-the-speed-of-light world we live in, it's nice to look back and see how it once was and reflect on what it maybe should be. On the Broad stage through February 12 only, David Cromer's fascinating staging puts his audience smack dab in the middle of the town and makes us believe we have time-traveled back to this simpler but just as psychologically complicated era. How inexpensive things cost, how people trusted one another, and how they amused themselves by reading, attending choir practice or actually conversing with one another  instead of being glued to the TV set or sidetracked by other low quality, insignificant perversions! But there were some who just could not cope, like Mr. Stimson, the alcoholic choir director, who ended up committing suicide. We've all known people like him. So, the play is timeless. And somehow contemporary dress for the actors is not a hindrance to our accepting who and where they are, as it makes them like us, as we all fit together into one big macrocosm.

The cast are all top notch. Helen Hunt may be one the first female stage managers, but her straight-forward, intelligent, impersonal, no-nonsense approach to it works admirably. Lori Myers as Mrs. Gibbs is wonderfully edgy, functioning at top speed, as she keeps her longings locked inside. One scream for daughter Rebecca to come downstairs to breakfast is enough for us to sense just how tense she really is. Equally affecting is Kati Brazda as Mrs. Webb. Both execute the workaholic housewife syndrome to the letter. Jennifer Grace as Emily and James McMenamin as George are terrific especially in playing out the awkward stages of their early courtship in Act II. Jeff Still as Doc Gibbs, Tim Curtis as Editor Webb, Matthew Kimbrough as Constable Warren, Coby Getzug as Joe Crowell Jr. and the rest of the ensemble are in sync.