| "This is a Triumphant Debut for Welsh National Theatre" |
Welsh National Theatre |
| Reviewer Compilation of Our Town , Swansea Grand Theatre , January 27, 2026 |
Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" is unique. The last major production was in the autumn of 1991. Alan Alda played the Stage Manager, magnetically. Robert Allan Ackerman (1944-2022) directed. For Ackerman it was a productive year. In the summer he directed “When She Danced” by Martin Sherman. The twelve-strong cast was led by Vanessa Redgrave and included Frances de la Tour and Kevin Elyot. It also marked the debut of a RADA graduate of that year who came from Port Talbot. The texture of “Our Town” is deep; Wilder layers community, geography, geology even in a language of distinctiveness. The Stage Manager who orchestrates: "You come up here, on a fine afternoon and you can see range on range of hills awful blue they are up there by Lake Sunapee and Lake Winnipesaukee . . . and way up, if you've got a glass,you can see the White Mountains and Mt. Washington where North Conway and Conway is. And, of course, our favorite mountain, Mt. Monadnock, right here and all these towns that lie around it: Jaffrey, 'n East Jaffrey, 'n Peterborough, 'n Dublin; and there, quite a ways down, is Grover's Corners. "Yes, beautiful spot up here. Mountain laurel and li-lacks. I often wonder why people like to be buried in Woodlawn and Brooklyn when they might pass the same time up here in New Hampshire. Over there are the old stones, 1670, 1680...” * * * * The Stage was there for the first press night of Welsh National Theatre: “Full of tenderness and humanity, this inaugural production for Welsh National Theatre, from artistic director Michael Sheen and creative associate Russell T Davies, is both a quiet meditation on mortality and a clear statement of intent from a company seeking to platform Welsh talent and produce large-scale work at a time of severe funding cuts. "Sweeping across a decade’s worth of everyday events in the fictional New Hampshire town of Grover’s Corners, Thornton Wilder’s widely produced ode to community and human connection is a wistful ensemble piece, inextricably rooted in early 1900s Americana, despite the smattering of Welsh place names that appear here. “Director Francesca Goodridge approaches the piece with stately pacing, investing the mundane events of the characters’ lives with a palpable sense of quiet, unhurried grandeur. Everything feels simultaneously cosy and fragile, every relatable moment of family togetherness on the verge of being interrupted by tragedy. “Movement director Jess Williams turns the town itself into a living, breathing presence. Performers literally pull up the floorboards and fluidly rearrange them to form doors, tables and the sloping roofs of churches. At other times, the actors themselves become props, picked up and positioned about the space, spun in balletic lifts or danced around in slow motion. “Designer Hayley Grindle keeps the set mostly bare, with just a few hanging lighting rigs and trays of tall, gently swaying grass. Wooden ladders are stacked to suggest the upper floors of buildings or tombstones arrayed on a hillside, their sharp angles catching Ryan Joseph Stafford’s lush, liquid lighting. Ripples of grey suggest sheeting rain; dawn is a gorgeous interplay of dark violet and pink. And at key moments, torches provide points of dazzling light to represent stars, distant galaxies or lamps burning in windows glimpsed from great distances. “Heading the boisterous all-Welsh cast, Sheen plays the Stage Manager with just the right balance of mischief and gravitas, displaying some expert, understated comic timing as he navigates the character’s metatheatrical commentary, wry humour and occasional ominous pronouncements. There is deep pathos, too, as he pauses to mourn deaths silently or pose philosophical questions, his eyes shining with unshed tears.” Abridged, with thanks and acknowledgement, from the full review which can be read by subscription at: https://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/our-town-review-swansea-grand-theatre-michael-sheen-welsh-national-theatre * * * * Buzz was there: “The anticipated first production by Welsh National Theatre, an adaption of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, has arrived, opening in the company’s home city of Swansea. When it premiered in Princeton, NJ in 1938, it was to a lukewarm reception, perhaps due to its lack of scenery and the stage manager’s strange narration, now factors in its modern reverence. It quickly became an award-winning drama, garnering Wilder his second Pulitzer Prize, and is now one of the most-performed American plays. “Before becoming a playwright, Wilder studied archaeology, and while on a dig in a first-century tomb in Rome, unearthed a painting of family life. He was struck by how, despite the millennia separating him from his discovery, human lives are universally connected regardless of the passing of time. From this fascination with the interconnecting elements that make up our lives, Our Town evolved. “Welsh National Theatre founder Michael Sheen was, he says, left in emotional tatters after reading Our Town; the need to be with loved ones immediately, simply to tell them how much he cared, was overwhelming. Being a passionate Welshman from a tight-knit community, it was inevitable an adaption would happen when the time was right. “We witness the daily routines, the local choir rehearsals, marriages and births, the changing landscapes with the seasons, Mrs Webb’s breakfast habits and love blossoming to a backdrop of industrial evolution, the introduction of the car and political tensions. “...this is a triumphant debut for Welsh National Theatre. Our Town is everyone’s community: life, love, work, and ultimately our relationship with death. The emotion stays well after the final curtain, a reminder of what moves us and makes us” Abridged, with thanks and acknowledgement, from the full review which can be read by subscription at: https://www.buzzmag.co.uk/our-town-stage-review-swansea-grand-welsh-national-theatre/ * * * * The Guardian was there: “Wilder’s play, premiering in the interwar years, in 1938, is more eternal than political, dramatising a close-knit community navigating life, love and death. And the transposition is convincing here, in spirit, encapsulating the lilt of its Welshness, noisier, more playful and lyrical than the original, especially in its glowing visual imagination and movement design by Jess Williams as well as its emotional lighting by Ryan Joseph Stafford. “Comprising three acts and emphatically aware of its theatricality, the drama’s “stage manager”, played by Sheen, takes us to one morning in 1901 when we see the early bud of romance between young George Gibbs (Peter Devlin) and Emily Webb (Yasemine [sic] Özdemir). Three years later, that has bloomed into marriage. The final act jumps to the town’s cemetery, and an untimely death, in 1913. The stage manager casts his narrative eye over the town, describing, ruminating, introducing scenes before interrupting them and stepping in to play various characters too. Sheen, with waistcoat and watch-chain, is in his element, mixing mischievousness, earnestness and bathos. “It is a handsome production overall, filled with abundant physicality and some moments spark with magic, but there are also some broader inconsistencies. While the production feels Welsh in spirit and look – there is period costume, Welsh accents and names – its reference points are still prevailing American. This is a town made up of mostly Republicans, there are mentions of New Hampshire, the US constitution, the Louisiana Purchase and high school. This lends the production an unreal quality, unhinged from its original geography but also locked into it. Does the long strip of azure sky in the backdrop belong to the valleys or the US mountains? You yearn for “more” Welshness in its fibre.” Abridged, with thanks and acknowledgement, from the full review which can be read at: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2026/jan/22/our-town-review-michael-sheen-moves-american-classic-about-small-town-life-to-wales * * * * "Our Town" continues at Swansea Grand Theatre until 31t January, then Venue Cymru 3 - 7 February, Theatr Clwyd 11 - 21 February and the Rose Theatre, Kingston 26 February - 28 March |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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