THERE is precisely one word of dialogue in Thornton Wilder's ''Our Town'' that reveals something personal about the play's Stage Manager, a kind of all-knowing god of Americana who narrates the bittersweet story of small-town life, love and loss. The detail -- another character refers to the Stage Manager as ''sir'' -- is telling inasmuch as it...
In the past decade alone, there have been more than 4,000 productions of Thornton Wilder's ''Our Town.'' On Wednesday night, the one that has been playing at the Barrow Street Theater in the West Village broke the record that the original Broadway production from 1938 set for its longest run: 337 performances, and counting. Tappan Wilder, Thornton...
I always thought that the Keen Company's mission statement -- that it ''produces sincere plays'' -- could be improved to ''sincerity forever,'' to borrow a title from a Mac Wellman comedy. But that would be glib and maybe a little insincere, and the thing about the artists at the Keen is that unlike most every other theater, which cooks up a...