My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither but just enjoy
your ice cream while it’s on your plate — that’s my philosophy,”
says Sabina, the sexy, scene-stealing maid in Thornton Wilder’s The
Skin of Our Teeth, his apocalyptic triptych about a loving but
deeply dysfunctional family that constantly invents, destroys, and
rebuilds the whole world. That’s not only the character talking,
though. It’s also Wilder — the arch-modernist from a family so
gifted his biography might be mistaken for a Wes Anderson screenplay
— talking directly to his audience, extolling them to shake off
their worry and live in the present tense.

Wilder had a literary sweet tooth and liked to use ice cream as a
metaphor for those rare, ephemeral moments when humans are able to
exchange their fear and confusion for love and clarity. Ice cream sodas
are at the heart of Our Town, his most famous play. It’s a pair
of ice cream sodas that help George Gibbs and Emily Webb, the young
lovers from Grover’s Corners, to realize they are having an “important
conversation.” That scene, between a baby-faced Kinon Keplinger and
Emily F. Chateau, as George and Emily, is the syrup-soaked cherry on
Theatre Memphis’ too-somber but no less satisfying production of
Wilder’s masterpiece.

Director Kell Christie has described Our Town as her favorite
American play. That helps to explain a painstakingly reverent treatment
of the material that dampens the humor in some of the show’s lighter
moments. But Christie and her cast bring a winning sincerity to
Wilder’s words that keeps things moving from one familiar scene to the
next.

Theatre Memphis regulars Barclay Roberts and Chris Hart are
especially engaging as Dr. Gibbs and Mr. Webb, the play’s addled but
well-meaning father figures. Bennett Wood, who recently directed
Roberts in the frothy Moonlight & Magnolias, is especially
comforting as the Stage Manager. He’s a composed presence who carefully
describes the town and everything that happens in the most unadorned
and soothing tones possible. Anne Marie Caskey and Bonnie Kourvelas
never stop moving as Mrs. Gibbs and Mrs. Webb. They even snap invisible
beans every time they sit down to chat. Their detailed mimes are a
reminder that adult life is a perpetual state of business with little
time for reflection.

In keeping with tradition, Grover’s Corners is presented as a bare
stage broken up with a few chairs and ladders. The townsfolk are
depicted as actors in a play that is always in rehearsal. It’s the
clever playwright’s cleverest trick, ensuring that his words would
always be spoken in the present. It can never become stuck in 1937, the
year the play was written, or be completely defined by the
pre-Depression period between 1901 and 1913 in which the story is set.
With this device, Wilder hitched his play to eternity.

In life and death, the citizens of Grover’s Corners — Our
Town — remind us that our time on earth is too short and too
confusing to get hung up on fairy stories about the “good old days”
when things were simpler and better. Because those days— like
Grover’s Corners itself — never really existed anywhere outside
our imaginations. The place this show occupies in our cultural
consciousness suggests that’s a message we can’t hear too often. Enjoy
this big bowl of theatrical ice cream before it melts away on May
24th.