"Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it --- every, every minute?" asks Emily in OUR TOWN, a play about life as it is.
Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning script presents vignettes of daily life in small-town, turn-of-the-century America as a microcosm of universal human condition. However, instead of offering intellectual existential meanderings about the "why" of things, it concentrates on "how" people live --- their daily chores and concerns, the growing pains of childhood, the discovery of love, the institution of marriage, the finality of death. The play urges us to savour each detail of our lives, especially those we take for granted, and make the most of living....before it has passed us by.
This canvas of universal existence is, appropriately, a near-empty stage with a minimum of sets and props; and actions are played-out on it with an extensive use of mime to denote realistic, everyday situations. The audience's imagination kicks-in, colouring the 'picture', aided by sound and light and prompted by the Stage Manager, who acts as narrator, friend, philosopher and guide, taking one through the play from the simplistic scenario of its opening to its surrealistic end.
In Akash Khurana's production, the script's three acts have been telescoped into one, dropping some lines and a few minor characters; but the cuts don't bleed. In fact, the experience becomes all the more concentrated and all the better for it, making for an intense ninety minutes. The choice is a courageous one and demands utmost involvement from actors and audience.
It is to Mr. Khurana's credit that one's attention doesn't flag....most of the time. There is thankfully no attempt to mimic any kind of American accent (let alone the specific rural New Hampshire variety) but one can't shake the feeling that most of the characters, the older ones in particular, somehow don't 'look' right. There seems to be too large a difference between what is said about them (by the Stage Manager) and what is actually seen and heard onstage. It seems the doctrine of universality has been taken too far, as some of these characters are robbed of distinctive colour, and therefore, credibility.
Khurana has paced the play judiciously, neither breathless nor somnolent. Though opening night could have been a shade tighter, the action dovetails neatly from scene to scene, some of which are quite complex with multiple simultaneous goings-on, orchestrated masterfully. The miming, however, tends to be somewhat approximate.
The director himself plays the Stage Manager. He was initially a little flat but warmed-up expressively thereafter in communicating with the audience; though one always felt there was a certain distance maintained, perhaps intentionally. The finest performance of the evening came from Lucky Vakharia as Mrs. Gibbs, utterly true and spot-on in emotion and characterisation. Abir Abrar, as Emily, was an unfortunate disappointment, lacking the vocal range and a certain incandescence required to bring this pivotal, trenchantly-written role to vivid theatrical life. The rest of the cast was more than competent.
The production's sound-design by Dilshad Edibam Khurana is beautifully judged; the many sound-effects, offstage and on, accurately chosen and executed. The mise-en-scene, aided by Akarsh Khurana's adept lighting, conjures-up a three-dimensional world, extending well into and around the audience.
One only hopes the audience would feel similarly involved, because, on the whole, this production of OUR TOWN remains earthbound. The play's deceptively simple script has nuggets of quiet, homespun philosophy which can transcend into a deeply uplifting, even spiritual experience....a transformatory magic seldom realised in this staging.
*Jiten S Merchant was the English drama critic for the Times of India (Mumbai) from 1989 to 1997, after which he free-lanced for the paper and on the Internet. He has worked in amateur and professional theatre as actor and sound-designer, and has directed and performed in staged play-readings. Currently, he is an accredited reviewer for Seen and Heard International, one of the oldest and most widely-read online purveyors of music-criticism, for whom he covers concerts of Western Classical music and Opera in Mumbai. His recent pieces are available on his blog: merchant-at-large.blogspot.in
