Our Town

This is a really fine version of "Our Town." It is much better than the 1940 version which both changed the plot and set the play in a real set. Perhaps what is most charming about this version was the set which had outlines of the houses in which the actions took place.

I especially liked Hal Holbrook as the stage manager and the late John Houseman as the professor.

Our town is a fine piece of literature and this is probably the best version made for screen.

I remember falling in love with Thorton Wilder's wonderful play when I was in high school and I still love it today. This is probably that best play ever written and this adaptation really does it justice. Hal Holbrook is wonderful as the stage manager. He was a great Mark Twain and I don't think I have ever seen an actor who can bring to his roles the everyman and folksy quality that he does. Because this play is really pantomime and done without props, it is really a challenge for the actors and all of them do really well. Robby Benson has often been ridiculed and I feel this is unfair because he does a great job as George (if you overlook the funny way he says "fahmer") Our Town deserves to be called an icon of our culture and I wish everyone could see this superb version. Thorton Wilder would have been very proud.

This version plays more like a greeting card than a vital alive play to me, I much prefer the Spalding Grey/Eric Stoltz/Penelope Miller 1989 version. Hal Holbrook is so folksy he comes off like one of those talking racoons from a Disney movie. John Houseman is great, as is Ford Rainey, but overall there is a self -importance about this production that distances it from you, and doesn't let you feel anything because they're too busy showing you it's a 'classic'. Better than the 1940 version, but stick with the 1989 version.

I was lucky enough to see this in its first broadcast, and have never forgotten it, especially Act III. I agree in retrospect with the criticism of Hal Holbrook being too "folksy", only because I am currently involved in a stage production in which the Stage Manager's narration is more detached -- not cold, but not as personally involved.

There are many plays that will move me to tears, or to anger, but the emotional response is usually FOR the characters portrayed. That is, it is a detached response, with little or no sense of personal participation in the milieu that is creating the response. In "Our Town", the paucity of set decoration and the inclusion of us, the audience, in the action through our being addressed directly by the Stage Manager, makes this a personal experience.

In the presentation of which I'm a part just now, I'm merely an extra -- one of the dead in Act III without lines, Farmer McCarthy. I found there is just one difficult aspect of that role: Enforcing on myself the rule that dead people don't cry. Takes discipline.

My Dad showed this version to me when I was little. It always amazes me how talented the cast had to be to have no props and very little set. I saw Paul Newman as the Narrator on Broadway, but this version is my favorite.