Our Town

Somehow I never read Our Town in high school or in six years as an English major, but just this week I enjoyed it very much. This is a bare-bones, stripped-down play with a pointed message: that we should wonder at and be grateful for the big and small details in life while we're still living it - "clocks ticking...and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths... and sleeping and waking up."

The back of the book calls it "the great American play," and though I've hardly ready enough drama to either agree or disagree with that assessment, I can see why he said it. The professor who wrote the Foreward also makes an impassioned case against those who complain that it's dated, simplistic, sentimental, or uneventful:

"Our Town is anything but dated, it is timeless; it is simple, but also
profound; it is full of genuine sentiment, which is not the same as its being sentimental; and, as far as its being uneventful, well, the event of the play is huge: it's life itself."

Read Our Town for yourself and see if you don't agree. Or if you rolled your eyes at it in high school and you've now got a few more years of experience under your belt, give it another shot.