MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The play "Our Town" is an American classic. It was written in 1938, and it's still staged all over the country in high schools and regional theaters. And now it's back on Broadway, after a journey that began in New Hampshire to the town that inspired the play. Beth Fertig went along for the ride.
BETH FERTIG: Thornton Wilder based the mythical Grover's Corners on the very real small town of Peterborough, N.H. That's where the cast and crew of the new Broadway production are seeing the sites that inspired Wilder.
GUS KAIKKONEN: The street - Main Street - connects with Grove Street, which is the other main street of the town.
FERTIG: Their guide is Gus Kaikkonen.
KAIKKONEN: That probably would have been the church.
FERTIG: Peterborough is tiny - just a few streets. He points to a small office building that was once a drug store with a soda fountain. In the play, the town's citizens navigate daily life, marriage and death. The soda fountain is the site of a pivotal love scene.
KAIKKONEN: And that's where Emily and George have their first date, right? So - and it's where I was married.
(CHEERING)
FERTIG: About 50 members of the Broadway company traveled by bus from New York City to Peterborough before rehearsals started. They also read the play together for the first time. Jim Parsons, who's performed in several Broadway productions since leaving TV's "The Big Bang Theory," plays the omniscient narrator.
(SOUNDBITE OF PLAY, "OUR TOWN")
JIM PARSONS: (As narrator) The first act shows a day in our town. The day is May 7, 1901. The time is just before dawn. The sky is beginning to show some streaks of light over in the east there.
FERTIG: Wilder got to know Peterborough while staying at the MacDowell residency for artists in the 1930s. Director Kenny Leon has won multiple Tony awards for revivals, including "Fences" and "A Raisin In The Sun."
KENNY LEON: I wasn't a fan of the play growing up.
FERTIG: As a young Black man in the South, he says "Our Town's" depiction of a tiny white town in early 20th century New England didn't speak to him. That changed when he staged the play in Atlanta over a decade ago with a multiracial cast and found it contains a powerful message.
LEON: This is a play about time - how we spend our time, how we use our time. Is anyone ever really present? Is the use of cellphones, even, taking us away from what Wilder's greatest wish for us was? So at some point, you probably will see a cellphone in the play.
FERTIG: Leon says this new production takes place today, with actors from all races, ages and backgrounds speaking as they normally do, with no New Hampshire accents. "Our Town" leaves room for imagination because it deliberately has no scenery. Wilder said he wanted to focus on the small details of life. Writer Howard Sherman documented performances of the play by immigrants, emergency service workers and incarcerated people in his book "Another Day's Begun: Thornton Wilder's Our Town In The 21st Century." He says going to Peterborough gives the cast and crew another layer of inspiration.
HOWARD SHERMAN: There is something powerful about being on the streets that Thornton Wilder walked in the years prior to writing this play and incredibly moving about standing in East Hill Cemetery.
KAIKKONEN: We're in the cemetery in Peterborough.
FERTIG: The play tackles profound questions in its final act after a character dies.
KAIKKONEN: And that's Asa Gibbs' gravestone, who died in...
FERTIG: Kaikkonen is showing me the Gibbs family monument, which dates back to the 1840s. In "Our Town," the two main families are named the Gibbs and the Webbs. The cemetery is on a hilltop facing a mountain, and there's a light rain.
KAIKKONEN: It gets you, doesn't it? I mean, it gets me.
FERTIG: Wilder takes his characters to a cemetery to make a point about life and the beauty of everyday moments - like going on a date.
EPHRAIM SYKES: It's our first little meet in front of where we would have had our first date.
ZOEY DEUTSCH: Yeah.
SYKES: Yeah.
FERTIG: Actors Zoe Deutsch and Ephraim Sykes play the teenagers Emily Webb and George Gibbs. They stop in front of the office building that was once the soda shop. It's where their characters fall in love.
SYKES: I feel like there's little "Our Town" ghosts walking around. There's just - I don't know. There's just a good spirit and good energy coming out of this stuff.
DEUTSCH: I know. It's so special to be able, on the first day when we're meeting each other, too...
SYKES: Yeah.
DEUTSCH: ...To be in the place that inspired these characters. I mean, that's a real luxury.
FERTIG: And taking time to appreciate one another is the real luxury Wilder asks us to think about in "Our Town."
FERTIG: For NPR News, I'm Beth Fertig in New York. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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