Our Town

Classic Gold

Ask anyone who does theatre in Mumbai, how tough it is to get two actors together, leave aside 20!  Akvarious’s Our Town, a Pulitzer Prize-winning classic by Thornton Wilder, is a poignant, low-key yet dramatic portrayal of ordinary life in an American town in the early 20th century. Directed by Akash Khurana, who also plays Wilder’s narrator or Stage Manager, Our Town shows that there can be poetry in everyday life, and something as routine as the newspaper boy delivering the paper, the train passing in a distance,  the voices of the choir carrying into the quiet evening air can become punctuations in the days and nights that are lived with little variation, but lots of joys and sorrows.  Watching the play today brings about a harsh realisation of how much life has progressed, and also how little this the progress has added to the day-to-day living of ordinary people.

Khurana always manages to get the right actors for the main parts—even though the ones who play parents are much too young.  Still Faisal Rashid as the town doctor and father of the young romantic (Karan Pandit) who woos and weds the girl next door (Abir Abrar) has the kindliness and dignity of old-style patriarchs.  The mothers, Lucky Vakharia and Prerna Chawla are charming.

Young audiences might see a glimpse of the past in the play, while seniors are likely to be awash in nostalgia. Akash Khurana had adapted the play in an Indian setting, and lost it.  He is still searching for it.