Hard to believe Thornton Wilder, the author of the comedy "The Merchant of Yonkers" (on which the hit musical "Hello Dolly was based), also wrote "Our Town", always a minimalized (no sets per se, mostly tables and chairs) production (except for the Hollywood big screen version, starring William Holden and Martha Scott as George and Emily, with a sanitized happy ending), about the mundane lives of the Gibbs and Webb families and their neighbors in Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, early in the 20th century.
Act 1 presents an ordinary day in the life of the town. Act 2 carries the story forward with the courtship and marriage of George Gibbs (Robby Benson, who is fine but struggles slightly with a New England accent) and Emily Webb (the luminous Glynnis O'Connor). The two eventually marry after George has an attack of nerves and considers backing out, only to be chastised and straightened out by his mother. Emily also has her jitters. However, the marriage does go forward.
Act 3 gives an interesting but almost unrelentingly sad counterpoint to the first two scenes. Set entirely in the village's cemetery with the dead seated unmoving and mostly silent, we learn that someone has died but we do not immediately learn who. It turns out that Emily Webb Gibbs has died while giving birth to her second child. Mrs. Soames asks Julia Gibbs (both women are deceased and sitting in the cemetery) what Emily died from, and Mrs. Gibbs (who somehow knows) says Emily died in childbirth. The marriage, despite her and George's initial jitters and fears, had been a happy one, and George appears to be doing well as a farmer. Mrs. Soames (played with great warmth by Charlotte Rae) responds: "Childbirth. I had forgotten all about that. My, wasn't life awful ... and wonderful", to which Simon Stimson, in life the competent but increasingly embittered and alcoholic church organist (the reason for his turbulent life never explained), whom the audience learns had committed suicide but was still permitted a decent burial, takes umbrage. Emily then appears, her hair beribboned, and takes her seat. As she carries no child with her it is presumed the baby survived. She greets some of her newfound company who politely reply while her mother-in-law insists that the new arrival "rest".
During and after her funeral, Emily converses with Mrs. Gibbs, who we learn, died of pneumonia while visiting her married daughter, Rebecca, in Ohio (Rebecca does not appear in this act). We also learn that Emily's younger brother, Wally, died as a child when his appendix burst, thus now leaving the Webbs predeceased by both of their children, although the Stage Manager does not reference this awful twist of fate. Emily suddenly realizes it is possible to return to the sphere of the living after being transported momentarily while thinking about her life. She is warned against this by both Mrs. Gibbs (cryptically) and Mrs. Soames (slightly less cryptically), and the Stage Manager indicates the futility of it. But Emily insists and selects her 12th birthday (February 11, 1899) as the day to return to but soon realizes it's not what she thought it would be.
Seeing her parents (but not her brother, whose early death, even before her own, would likely have convulsed her) breaks her heart. Emily keeps saying that she never recalled her mother looking so young. But it all goes too fast and people don't look at or really listen to one another, bustling about as though they had forever to enjoy life.
Simon Stimson, who, despite the Stage Manager's insistence that the dead are "weaned away" from their former lives, is still raw and talks bitterly, upon the least prompting, of the ''ignorance and blindness'' of the living after Emily recounts how painful the experience was. Simon talks of how people "move about in a cloud of ignorance . . . Always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another". To which Mrs. Gibbs (played by Sada Thompson with a quiet intensity), who has clearly assiduously mastered "the weaning away" from the world of the living -- and who shows no reaction when her widower, Dr. Gibbs (Ned Beatty, showing a powerful but restrained emotion) stops briefly by her grave to leave flowers -- replies "spiritedly", as the stage directions indicate, perhaps triggered to defend Emily by some dormant but not fully extinguished instinct (and does so with considerably more fire than she has shown or will show again), "That ain't the whole truth, Simon Stimson, and you know it."
Unfortunately, Wilder didn't consider giving Mrs. Gibbs a next line: "Now see what you made me do, Simon", given that her interplay with Simon will have set her back from the weaning process which she has apparently mastered, remaining motionless while the audience can only guess at what lies behind the polite frozen visage and poignantly dark but somehow vacant eyes. Simon has forced her from her advanced "weaned" state into a plane she clearly -- and up until Emily's arrival, quite successfully so -- means to put behind her. Simon, however, can't quite do so.
George Gibbs then comes by, after the other mourners have all departed. He breaks down by his wife's grave. Emily shows only a brief tinge of emotion and Julia Gibbs remains indifferent.
The Stage Manager, superficially folksy but commanding (as played by Hal Holbrook; Sterling Gray was apparently, although I didn't see his acclaimed performance, less steely in the role) and all-knowing character who serves as the narrator, sums up the play, and sends the audience home.
Sadly, the scenes with John Houseman were cut from the final work product before it was released on television.
ADDENDUM: According to Wikipedia, "In 1946, the Soviet Union prevented a production of Our Town in the Russian sector of occupied Berlin "on the grounds that the drama is too depressing and could inspire a German suicide wave", which sounds quite facetious.
