Review: OUR TOWN, Starring Michael Sheen, Rose Theatre

Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play, Our Town, marks the first production for Michael Sheen’s Welsh National Theatre. After selling out across Welsh venues, this understated gem of a play moves west to give audiences of the Rose Theatre a chance to see what this exciting new company can do.

We begin in 1901 in Grover’s Corners, a small and very ordinary town in New Hampshire. The narrator, here called Stage Manager, describes the everyday life; women make the family breakfast, children go to school and milk is delivered. 

Focus then pulls to teenagers George and Emily and their burgeoning love story, moving on three years later to their wedding. However, there is a sense of shadow encroaching on the happy scenes and the final act takes a much more sombre turn.

As the Stage Manager, Michael Sheen is mischievous as he jumps in and out of the action, adding wit and also reflective solemnity. Sheen is an actor who totally inhabits the parts he plays and it is a joy to see him on stage, guiding the production, but never dominating. A real test for this new company will be when he does not perform with them.

He is ably supported by an excellent ensemble cast, with a gorgeous partnership between innocent young lovers Peter Devlin as George Gibbs and Yasemin Özdemir as his next-door neighbour Emily Webb. Devlin is thoughtful and tender while Özdemir is just delightful as her face reflects all her hopes and anxieties about the future. There is also lovely work from Rhodri Meilir as the affectionate family man Mr Webb and Rhys Warrington as the gay choirmaster who drinks to hide his shame.

The play may seem an odd choice for Welsh National Theatre's very first production. In many ways, it is American through and through, with references to baseball, dollars, quarts and Republicans. But the actors speak in Welsh accents, with a sprinkling of references to Welsh towns and mountains thrown in. There are even some wonderfully sung Welsh hymns, but this apparent disconnect never jars, as the story and the people in it are universal.

That was one of Wilder's points; human stories are human. There is beauty in the quotidian and the production serves as a bittersweet reminder to grasp everyday life. It's a message that resonates strongly today-look up from those phones and recognise that time is passing and life should be lived right now. Acts one and two may be a little overlong, in contrast to the shorter gut-punch of the third act, but this is a minor quibble.

Director Francesca Goodridge, along with Jess Williams's beautiful movement direction, brings a considered ebb and flow to the production. Hayley Grindle's stripped-back stage leaves the cast to create the scenes with use of planks of wood and plant boxes on casters. The use of ladders is incredibly creative; from recreating first floor bedroom windows from where George and Emily chat to each other, to the dead members of the community sitting atop ladders as their gravestones.

There is a balletic quality to much of the movement, with a sensitive and silent depiction of Simon Stimpson's covert activity with another man and a heartbreaking sequence as a family mourns a loss. Ryan Joseph Stafford’s lighting is fluid and evokes rain, the dawn breaking and an effective use of small torches to represent bright stars. Dyfan Jones's compostition deliniates the jollity of normal life, contrasting with the emptiness after death.

Sheen's founding of Welsh National Theatre is a true example of putting your money where your mouth is; founded by the actor with his own cash when The National Theatre of Wales lost its Arts Council funding. Our Town is a delicately nuanced and beautifully realised production and Sheen and his new company deserve every future success. It is the most promising of beginnings.

Our Town is at the Rose Theatre until 28 March