A 'Town' that Time Treated Kindly

Trussed up there among the stage lights, in a small miracle of engineering devised by set designer John Musial, are hundreds of objects -- divans, pianos, tables, chairs, iron bed frames, bicycles, carpets, dollhouses, old clothes, chandeliers, a giant globe and even a few simple wooden coffins. It's a strangely poetic yet eerily threatening assemblage that evokes a profound sense of loss and nostalgia.

It also acts as a warning about the ephemeral nature of life, and all the "things" we associate with it-- a warning that seems especially evocative at this moment when acquisition suddenly has become such a suppressed impulse.

Of course Thornton Wilder's charming yet haunting play grew out of the Great Depression (it debuted in 1938) and clearly was devised to make audiences ponder the ineffable and altogether mysterious nature of human existence -- that notion of being and nothingness that we are continually aware of, but which we are hard-wired to ignore, simply because dwelling on it would make life all but impossible.

Apart from its set, the Lookingglass "Our Town" -- co-directed by Anna D. Shapiro and Jessica Thebus and featuring 13 members of the close-knit ensemble -- is a fairly straightforward, gently elegiac interpretation of the play. Comparisons are difficult to avoid, and the truth is, this version possesses little of the edgy irony, biting humor or surprise found in David Cromer's production of the play for the Hypocrites last year -- a production soon to open in an Off-Broadway edition.

On the other hand, more people will probably end up seeing the Lookingglass show, and it is not without its pleasures.

The actual stage here is, as Wilder imagined it, all but bare, aside from a couple of well-worn kitchen tables and chairs signifying the home of the Gibbs, the doctor's family, and their neighbors, the Webbs, whose patriarch is the local newspaper editor. (The matriarchs, in the tradition of the early decades of the 20th century, are homemakers, though you can sense how they suppress their dissatisfactions.)

All the characters are dressed in creamy white (costumes by Janice Pytel), which gives them the softly bleached look of ghosts, although the Stage Manager, who supplies the droll narration -- played here by Joey Slotnick in a neatly deceptive, winningly matter-of-fact style -- is dressed in a light brown suit.

The play, in three short acts, spins the story of these two families over about 14 years, following the budding high school romance between George Gibbs (David Schwimmer), a star baseball player and less-than-stellar student who hopes to take over his uncle's farm, and Emily Webb (Laura Eason), the fiercely smart and self-confident girl who wins his heart by enumerating his defects. Their soda shop awakening, panicky youthful marriage and short-lived future move quickly from this world to the next. Wilder is a master at suggesting how fate can quickly intervene to leave you breathless and stunned. And Schwimmer's impassioned final gesture, and Eason's beautifully limned scenes on "the other side," only underscore this.

David Catlin and Heidi Stillman, and Christine Dunford and an appealingly understated Andrew White, play the respective parents, while Louise Lamson, as George's effusive younger sister, nails a couple of delicious laughs and delivers a beguiling take on the famous "letter into the universe" riff. The cast also includes Thomas J. Cox and Raymond Fox in multiple turns, along with David Kersnar, Tracy Walsh and Kevin Douglas.

Only when the beauty of daily life is snatched from us, Wilder warns, do we fully appreciate its simple pleasures. A lesson worth remembering.