Not / Our Town, by Pony World Theatre

Be wary, look about. - The Nurse, Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene V

Warning: this play contains theatricality. That sums up a big chunk of the acreage covered by the reviews and write-ups of Not / Our Town that I have seen. They all talk about a unique feature of the play. Before it begins, you are asked to scan a QR code and answer several questions. Audience answers collectively determine various things that happen in the play. For example, you can request that the actors use props, which they did not in the original Our Town a century ago.

So, I guess I am doing the same as the items in the Times (in the regular paper and in their The Ticket), the Stranger, and Broadway World Seattle. I am leading off with talking about this. But only because I think the focus on this feature dominates the discussion and misses the point.

I don’t recall how many questions there are, maybe seven or eight or so, and as the play goes on, you can sort of count them off in your head. If you’re like me, you might lose track in Act Two as you get more and more engaged. But eventually (it happened for me after I got home) you will grapple with the last question.

In the final scenes of the original Our Town, one of the characters, Emily, having newly died and entered something not quite like heaven begs to return to her life for just one day. She gets a last chance to experience life. But everyone is missing what was important, including Emily herself, and letting it go by. “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute?” she asks.

In Pony World’s version, Sophia Franzella as Emily and Kathy Hsieh as Mrs. Webb, Emily’s mother do a devastating version of this scene. Emily is overcome with a kind of existential horror that The Twilight Zone could only dream of – while also experiencing as if for the first time the true joy of being alive. It’s a remarkable performance. Having looked back, Emily retreats to the afterworld.

Then Pony World does it one better. While doing scenes, fairly faithfully from the original, this show builds a frame around those. Mark Fullerton and Amber Walker play father and daughter. Father is a theater professor (or something like that, forgive me if I’ve gotten that wrong) who has produced, directed, performed, and taught Our Town countless times. Daughter has participated more or less willingly in many of those. Father loves the play. Daughter is not so sure.

By the end of Act One it becomes clear their disagreements about Our Town are a stand-in for deeper and more urgent things. Not surprisingly their relationship comes to a head just soon after the Emily/Mrs. Webb scene ends. So, we get to see that same poignancy played out again between characters that we have become close to, perhaps closer than we could be to the old characters from a century ago. If it doesn’t get you the first time, surely it will get you the second time.

Then, as I said the final question hits. You get to experience the power of Emily’s realization for a third time. The show has traveled all the way, like light from a star, through time and space and into your heart.

If the original has lost its luster, or never had it for you, this version tries to bring it alive. It’s a huge success. It’s genius, a new classic. I hope it gets recognized for its brilliance and is performed for decades just as the original is.