Posted: 7/1/20 at 1:25pm
Ravenclaw said: "I loveOur Townso, so deeply, and I love Bartlett Sher's work so, so deeply. I want to be really excited by this news. And yet...
It's hard to imagine who can really be excited about this piece of casting. Yes, Hoffman is a very talented actor, but he's still mostly failed to apologize for or acknowledge the many accusations against him. Beyond the accounts of sexual harassment he has refused to acknowledge, it's still hard for me to watch great performances of his likeKramer vs Kramerknowing how he tormented Meryl Streep for the sake of their performances.
But beyond that, it's become hard for me to see a production ofOur Townthat's had anything worthy to say about the play after David Cromer's astonishing production. Every production I've seen since his has either copied his famous coup de théâtre outright and suffered in comparison or purposefully not copied that choice and and also suffered in comparison. That production was such a landmark production that completely redefined one of the most important pieces of the canon that ten years later there are even references to it in the filmMarriage Story. I love Bartlett Sher as a director, but I'm even doubtful of his ability to bring something new to the play.
But say he does find something interesting and new in the play, and say Hoffman makes a genuine apology and changes his behavior. The last revival proved that the character of the Stage Manager can be played by an actor of any age or gender, challenging the way the role is typically cast as an old white man. To revert back to tradition and cast as the omniscient authority figure as an old white man just feels uncreative and unexciting. I hope that the rest of the cast around him is very diverse.
I was a teenager when I saw David Cromer'sOur Town, and that production opened my eyes to the beauty of what I now think is one of the most beautifulpieces of American literature. I so want a new production to cause the next generation of young people to fall in love with this play, but I have to say that I'm already doubtful that this production will do it."
Still (and I suspect always) the most revelatory production I've ever seen of a play I thought I knew well. And I do wonder if, like the most recent Broadway "Glass Menagerie," its choices are so strong and logical that they'll inform subsequent performances (meaning, in "Glass," casting an actor with a disability as Laura and, in "Our Town," adopting a tone that is much more pissed-off than nostalgic and folksy.)
