Starring four-time Emmy Award® winner Jim Parsons, Our Town returns to Broadway for the first time in over 20 years. Hailed by Edward Albee as “the greatest American play ever written,” Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning classic will shine in a momentous new production. Directed by Tony Award® winner Kenny Leon (Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch, Topdog/Underdog, A Raisin in the Sun), this is an Our Town for our time.
In Wilder’s timeless tale of a small town, a stage manager narrates the daily lives of its locals, depicts a childhood friendship turn into marriage, and sets the stage for magnificent truths of what it means to be alive. Don’t miss this strictly limited engagement of an essential American classic.
Though “Our Town” runs just 105 minutes, much shorter than the original two hours and 35 minutes, the last act does drag a bit. This final chapter centers on death and what we miss out on when we’re not truly present. However, these scenes lean toward melodrama, removing some of the sharpness constructed in the play’s first two acts. Still, Leon masters the core of Wilder’s message. Life is fragile and fleeting, and love is all that matters.
Our Town, though, is a play not about death but about how to live. And if the final scene, in which Wilder tears down the shutters to stare directly at the audience, asking whether our lives have been lived less than fully, pummels across the footlights with the blistering force that it does here, Our Town has done its job. When Emily, whom Deutch, in her Broadway debut, lends a healthy balance of melancholy and cheekiness, pleads, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?,” Leon lets Wilder take us by the shoulders and shake.
1938 | Broadway |
Broadway |
1944 | Broadway |
Broadway |
1969 | Broadway |
Broadway |
1988 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
2002 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
2009 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway Revival Off-Broadway |
2017 | Regional (US) |
Benefit Reading Production Regional (US) |
2019 | West End |
Regent's Park Open Air Theatre London Revival West End |
2024 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Production Broadway |
Videos