NEW YORK -- "Nobody very remarkable ever come out of it, s'far as we know," says the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder's Our Town, speaking of Grover's Corners. No matter how shruggingly off-the-cuff the actor delivers it, the line sounds like a lie. This is, after all, Paul Newman up there, whose remarkableness -- easygoing star charisma incarnate, here sporting a cardigan and specs -- makes the fictional Protestant Republican burg a mighty glamorous place indeed.
The last time Newman played Broadway was in a 1964 romantic comedy called Baby Want a Kiss. Nobody remembers much about it, except that it starred Newman, straight off the movie Hud, and his wife, Joanne Woodward.
Now Newman has returned, wearing an air of humble authority like a second cardigan, in a revival of Wilder's 1938 play. The production's run at the Booth Theatre through January is sold out. It originated earlier this year at the Westport Country Playhouse, where Woodward is artistic director.
It is a curious and bittersweet experience, in ways only partly related to the curious bittersweetness of Wilder's endlessly circulated classic.
If you do it right, Our Town can -- and should -- be more troubling than most interpretations favor. Newman notwithstanding, director James Naughton's rendition is like most renditions. It is coyly hearty in its comedy and rather predictable in its pathos. Too many of the performances lack the ease and texture of what Wilder self-consciously labeled his first act: daily life.
Everything Newman does, and doesn't do, contrasts with a general impulse to "explain" the play's moods and themes. For a famously no-scenery play, designer Tony Walton has served up an awful lot of scenery. At one point, in a soft, gently expressive (albeit heavily amplified) voice, Newman lays out the facts about Wilder's town. The Stage Manager's lecture, in director Naughton's weirdly literal-minded staging, becomes an illustrated lecture, with slide projections.
Newman later scores some large laughs -- with a sharp hand-clap, he delivers the line about being 21 or 22 and "then whisssh! you're 70" -- but in the main, he does nothing to call attention to himself. This is a doggedly plain-spoken, virtually uninflected performance.
The other principals are played by seasoned performers, though you never believe these people live in the same town.
