By Lucy Komisar

Director Kenny Leon has cut Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play from 3 hours to 1 hour 40. I was grateful. The play on the life of small-town America covers the years from 1901 to 1913. For the period, gas lamps are hung out over the orchestra. The set is made of wood chairs, a weathered wall, an old spinet piano. But another part of the “set” is that the town seems sealed in glass, with no references to the outside world.

It opens with prayers of Jews and Muslims who are never again referred to. Was that Leon’s homage to diversity? Thornton Wilder did not write a play about inclusivity in America.

Making the Gibbs family black adds nothing, except jobs for some actors, and makes the production confused. There is no reference to their race. In early 1900s Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, there were no black doctors, and black boys did not marry white girls. Nor were there black gospel singers in the local church. Is this just non-traditional casting? A pretense that race was irrelevant in early 1900s America? Or that the play makes sense with real black and white families? It doesn’t in those years.

The stage manager’s twang belongs more to West Virginia than New England. He (Jim Parsons) is the key character, because this is supposed to take place in a theater. Real life as a play.

One character raises the issue of social injustice, but that is quickly quashed. Townsfolk aren’t interested. The town is dull, declares newspaper editor Webb (a very good Richard Thomas). No love of culture either, unless you include local girls who play piano. Webb likes the sun and birds and change of seasons.

His daughter Emily (a charming Zoey Deutch) is the brightest of her friends. Neighbor George Gibbs (the fine Ephraim Sykes) is a cute kid who would rather play baseball than do chores.

A drunk Simon Stimson (Donald Webber Jr), with an unspoken secret that causes his alcoholism, is rehearsing the choir. Louella Soames (the always terrific Julie Halston) comments on all goings-on. She’s the only one of the bunch I’d want to know.

It’s an ordinary day. Milk gets delivered. The milkman (played by deaf actor John McGinty) is deaf, which Leon’s woke direction put into Wilder’s script, complete with sign language that the locals amazingly know.

But even woke turns out uninteresting. Family plays are often boring, just this side of sitcoms and soap opera. Wilder had the advantage of writing before TV, so he had no competition.

 Three years later, Emily and George are getting married; we go back a year to their discovery of love. They are both nervous, say they want to cancel, but they wed. The stage manager playing the parson musing on the lives of the people he’s married: “Once in a thousand times it’s interesting.” That comment describes the play till now.

It gets your attention in a surreal Act 3 at the cemetery, now 1913. It’s the eve of the war, but the turmoil in Europe isn’t mentioned. The dead, including some we knew from the first acts, are talking about life and weather. Then a just-deceased person – one of the key characters (let’s keep the suspense) – arrives, and, with sobs and clutching by the mourners, we understand that tragedy is part of life. It plays in Peoria.

In 1938, there were many current themes unacceptable on the stage, so ordinary life endorsing the choices of audiences (almost everyone gets married) would be a success. And this is interesting as part of the American theater canon. But, today, in spite of the woke direction, it’s a period piece that pales.

“Our Town.” Written by Thornton Wilder, directed by Kenny Leon. Ethel Barrymore Theatre, 243 West 47^th St, NYC. Runtime 1hr40min. Opened Oct 10, 2024, closes Jan 19, 2025.