Cappies Review: Dominion High School's 'Our Town'

STERLING, VA—Does love survive beyond the grave? Does anything? Dominion High School's production of the "Great American Drama," Our Town, invites the audience into the small, languid town of Grover's Corners, asking existential questions about life, love, death, and the world beyond.

Written by prominent playwright Thornton Wilder as a rebellion against the opulence of early 20th-century American theatre, Our Town debuted on Broadway in 1938. Our Town won the 1938 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and its revivals and adaptations have gone on to win numerous awards. With a traditionally bare stage and no props, the townspeople of Our Town show the vicissitudes of life in three acts from the first sparks of love to the tragedy of death. The show, narrated by the Stage Manager, focuses on the heart-warming and heart-breaking tale of George Gibbs and Emily Webb, the young lovers of Grover's Corners.

Saskia Hunter (Stage Manager) opened the show with aplomb, confidently breaking the fourth wall and enticing the audience into her play-within-a-play. Hunter displayed a wide range of emotions in reaction to her own tale of Grover's Corners and connected to the audience with inspired physicality. As Thornton Wilder's mastermind behind the entire show, Hunter played the puppeteer exceptionally, interacting with both the audience and all of her characters to teach the lessons of the show. From her first introduction of the townspeople to the bleak outlook on life in the end, Hunter deftly held up the show on her two feet.

Inside the Stage Manager's play, Josh Thomas (George Gibbs) and Eleanor Walter (Emily Webb) gave remarkable performances as the young couple struggling through the vicious cycles of life together. Thomas brought authentic and meaningful emotion to his part, captivating the audience with playful smiles in his naive youth and a more reserved nature in his age. Walter exemplified another side of Grover's Corners as an infinitely nervous and intelligent woman trying to find love with her best friend. The pair's chemistry drove the show forward; it provided the climactic catharsis when one of them met death, and the other was left to grieve in the world of the living.

The townspeople of Grover's Corners were entertaining and showed all different sides of a seemingly one-dimensional New Hampshire town. Whether bringing the milk to every household or spending the dark evenings at choir practice, the ensemble brought the town to life and showed their uniqueness whenever they graced the stage. Especially striking were the motherly Marie Knight (Mrs. Gibbs) and the fatherly Dylan O'Rourke (Mr. Webb), who embraced their roles as parents with genuine care.

The aesthetics of the performance were true to Thornton Wilder's original vision of Our Town: a minimalist show with nothing but ladders, tables, and benches on stage. Instead of props, the cast convincingly pantomimed such actions as throwing newspapers and stringing beans for the winter. Although the lighting sometimes left people in shadow, and the microphones were sometimes inconsistent, neither of these shortcomings detracted from the overall appeal of the show.

The cast of Dominion High School's Our Town powerfully captured the gritty and down-to-earth drama of a sleepy American town and the plight of humanity when confronted by death.

Review by Simon VanDerWeide of Flint Hill School

Photo: Christian Calma/Dominion High School