Our Town | Review of Out Town
In this review, which originally appeared in the New York Times's February 5, 1938, edition, Atkinson praises Our Town as a moving evocation of the beauty and simplicity of ordinary life in America. Considered one of the most influential theatre reviewers in America, Atkinson served as drama critic for the New York Times from 1925 to I960.
Although Thornton Wilder is celebrated chiefly for his fiction, it will be necessary now to reckon with him as a dramatist. His Our Town, which opened at Henry Miller's last evening, is a beautifully evocative play. Taking as his material three periods in the history of a placid New Hampshire town, Mr. Wilder has transmuted the simple events of human life into universal reverie. He has given familiar facts a deeply moving, philosophical perspective. Staged without scenery and with the curtain always up, Our Town has escaped from the formal barrier of the modern theatre into...
[The entire page is 733 words long]
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