Our Town explores the relationship between two young Grover’s Corners neighbors, George Gibbs and Emily Webb, whose childhood friendship blossoms into romance, and then culminates in marriage. When Emily looses her life in childbirth, the circle of life portrayed in each of the three acts of Our Town–growing up, adulthood, and death–is fully realized.
Wilder offers a couple of chairs on a bare stage as the backdrop for an exploration of the universal human experience. The simple story of a love affair is constantly rediscovered because it asks timeless questions about the meaning of love, life and death. In the final moments of the play, the recently deceased Emily is granted the opportunity to revisit one day in her life, only to discover that she never fully appreciated all she possessed until she lost it. “Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you,” she says as she takes her place among the dead.
“It’s like one of those Middlewestern poets said, ‘You’ve got to love life to have life, and you’ve got to have life to love life.”
These words were spoken by Lucinda Matlock in Spoon River Anthology. She was based on poet Edgar Lee Masters’ grandmother.
I've seen the Thorton Wilder Play Our Town on stage more than once and recently viewed the 1940 movie version on the Turner Classic Movie (TCM) channel.
The story of a small town and it's community becomes more poignant as we age and become even more in touch with the reality as we learn (sometimes painfully) just how short and precious life is.
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