Our Town starring Michael Sheen – review round-up

Our Town – Wilder in Wales

Wilder’s Our Town evokes everyday life in the New Hampshire town of Grover’s Corners at the start of the 20th century, but this revival eschews American accents in favour of Welsh ones. How well does it work as Welsh National Theatre’s debut show?

For some critics, it is an ideal inaugural production. It is “a joyous, tender, Welsh-inflected staging” of a “a play that urges you to cherish the fleeting moments of everyday life and foregrounds the role of art in framing that message”, writes Sarah Hemming (Financial Times, ★★★★★). “What a lovely way to open your account,” agrees Dominic Cavendish (Telegraph, ★★★★). This is “a potent statement of intent with a spiritual frisson”.

Arifa Akbar (Guardian, ★★★) is less certain. “The production feels Welsh in spirit and look”, but “its reference points are still prevailingly American”, she observes. “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.”

“It’s a fudge, but the sense of community registers, as do Wilder’s copious ideas about how easily we all sleepwalk through life without giving thanks for its everyday wonders,” contends Dominic Maxwell (Times, ★★★★), while Dave Fargnoli (The Stage, ★★★★) finds it “a powerful and persuasive appeal to find beauty and connection in every moment of our lives”, and Sarah Crompton (WhatsOnStage, ★★★★) calls it “a perfect, low-key, but deeply theatrical beginning”.

Continues...

Our Town – delicate direction

Welsh director Goodridge recently took up the reins as artistic director of Cardiff’s Sherman Theatre, having previously worked as associate artistic director at Mold’s Theatr Clwyd. Here, her team includes designer Hayley Grindle, lighting designer Ryan Joseph Stafford, sound designer Dyfan Jones, movement director Jess Williams and Russell T Davies, Doctor Who showrunner and creator of It’s a Sin, in the role of “creative associate”.

Their work is mostly praised by the press. Goodridge’s staging has “a palpable sense of quiet, unhurried grandeur”, according to Fargnoli, and evokes “the romance and nostalgia of a bygone community”, according to Akbar. For Hemming, it is “a beautiful production of a wise play”.

“Grindle keeps the set mostly bare, with just a few hanging lighting rigs and trays of tall, gently swaying grass,” describes Fargnoli. “Wooden ladders are stacked to suggest the upper floors of buildings or tombstones arrayed on a hillside, their sharp angles catching Stafford’s lush, liquid lighting. Ripples of grey suggest sheeting rain; dawn is a gorgeous interplay of violet and pink.”

“Stafford’s glorious lighting moves from pale dawn to rich red sunlight and cool, magical moonlight,” echoes Crompton. “Williams sets [the cast] flowing in carefully contrived waves across the stage.” It is, Maxwell concludes, “unforcedly intense and deeply touching”.

Continues...

Our Town – superb Sheen

The star of the show, of course, is Sheen. He has spent more than three decades working across stage and screen, earning acclaim in everything from the film Frost/Nixon to the lockdown comedy Staged to Tim Price’s NHS drama Nye. How does he do here?

“He is simply in his element here, both outside and inside the action, a narrator also making telling cameos as characters,” writes Maxwell. “He adds gravitas, wit, a sonorous soulfulness, and makes it all look easy as pie. Acting this good is rare and joyous.”

As the Stage Manager, he has “just the right balance of mischief and gravitas” and “expert, understated comic timing”, according to Fargnoli, while Hemming admires how he blends “wry authority and warmth with something darker”. For Crompton, he is simply “magnificent”.

This is not a solo show, though, and there is plenty of praise for Sheen’s supporting cast, particularly Yasemin Özdemir and Peter Devlin as love interests Emily Webb and George Gibbs. Özdemir is “a glorious mix of anxiety and hope” for Crompton, while Devlin is “awkward, oversensitive and oblivious” for Fargnoli. Together, adds Hemming, they are “instantly loveable”.

Our Town – the verdict

There is no doubt about it: the first show from Michael Sheen’s Welsh National Theatre is a success. Some critics are unsure about how Thornton Wilder’s Our Town translates from rural America to rural Wales, but most agree that it remains a moving meditation on everyday life and the power of art to acknowledge that, and that Sheen excels at the heart of a deftly directed production.

It only gets three stars from the Guardian’s Arifa Akbar, but five stars from the Financial Times’ Sarah Hemming and four from everyone else suggest that Welsh National Theatre has opened with a hit. Next up, Sheen will star in a new play by Gary Owen.