Our Town (Also Cromer's "Town" and Schwimmer's "Town")

Couldn’t get tickets for the Hypocrites’ rhapsodically received production of Our Town in the Chopin basement? No sweat. It’s coming back to the Chopin this fall for another six-week run with most of its original cast in tow. Including its director. (And that’s not even half of the company’s good news.)

In case you haven’t heard: The Stage Manager character who narrates Thornton Wilder’s 1938 Pulitzer winner about small-town life—or, pending your perspective, about Buddhist philosophy—is played by the man who also directed the production, wry trickster David Cromer. (Full disclosure: Cromer’s a pal of mine.) His gorgeous staging has been sold out for most of its run, but the talk of an eventual remount was shrouded in melancholy; given the recent success with his off-Broadway transfer of Next Theatre’s Adding Machine, there appeared to be no chance that he’d be able to play the role again if the show came back. And audiences who’ve seen his sardonic, understated performance will tell you it can’t be replicated.

But somehow Cromer has cleared his schedule to appear in the remount.

But what’s perhaps more exciting is the company’s other fall project: a staging of Brecht and Weill’s Threepenny Opera in the Steppenwolf Garage, to be directed by Sean Graney. Coming off two very different productions—in addition to Cromer’s Our Town, the Hypocrites reached another, different kind of artistic high with Graney’s subversive promenade staging of Miss Julie—the Hypocrites have a new, well-earned aesthetic leverage. Brecht and Weill’s dark and complicated opera is a challenge worthy of the troupe in both its scope and its themes. Since the Hypocrites' last appearance in the Garage, Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis in 2006, nothing in the Steppenwolf’s Garage lineup has come within spitting distance of that production’s theatrical daring or its challenge of audience expectations. (Why the Garage ever has a dark night at all is beyond me, but surely there are companies doing less outwardly populist work than the House and Collaboraction, which could make dynamic use of that space.)

Meanwhile, the once-rumored Lookingglass production of Our Town—complete with David Schwimmer as George Gibbs and Joey Slotnick as the Stage Manager—is now confirmed as a part of the company’s 21st season, along with Heidi Stillman’s adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov and a revival of Mary Zimmerman’s The Arabian Nights (a fabled production I’m excited to see brought back around, never having had the chance to catch it the first time).

Of course, since the January chatter of an alumni-populated Lookingglass Our Town started, the stakes have been raised considerably. The show will be co-directed by protean talents Jessica Thebus and Anna Shapiro. Since the rumors began, Shapiro has picked up several directing prizes for her triumphant work in the Broadway transfer of August: Osage County (and our money’s on her to nab the Tony next Sunday).

Meanwhile, the Hypocrites’ modest-but-muscular staging has changed the way many Chicagoans think about Wilder’s play.

In the Chopin basement, you’ll see a host of seasoned non-Equity actors, many coming directly from their desk jobs, practicing their craft in the humblest environs possible. At Lookingglass, you’ll see a host of seasoned (technical) professionals in the ‘glass’s elegant Michigan Avenue digs, as well as some famous faces (in case such celeb-peeking is your version of Viagra).

Needless to say, this pair of Our Towns has also become a tale of two cities. But, as any Thornton Wilder buff will tell you, it's tough to find a more exciting contrast to kick off the fall theater season.