Until this year, I knew only one thing about Thornton Wilder, which was that he was some kind of big deal in the US. When I heard that the Almeida theatre in London was doing a revival of his 1938 play Our Town, I thought I’d go along, just so I’d have some idea of why he was such a big deal. Rumour has it that Our Town has been performed somewhere in the US every night since its premiere – anyway, a lot.
I imagined that it would be some kind of Norman Rockwell painting rendered into a theatre piece, a soothing and attractive idealisation, probably quite dated. Instead, I discovered that it was a masterpiece, as fresh and radical as the day it was written, and as profound and accessible a meditation on the human condition as anyone has ever created. It’s impossible to say quite why this is without giving away the ending, and I don’t want to do that, because everyone should see this play at least once in their lives. I think very often about the production I saw, and sometimes find myself in tears at the wonder of life and at how terribly so many people damage and deface it. Wilder is not anything like as big a deal as he ought to be, in a US and a world that really needs him.
