Oh earth, you’re too wonderful for anyone to ever realize you!

NDP’s thespians performed Our Town by Thornton Wilder after a mere two-and-a-half weeks of rehearsal. In the beginning, the stage manager (Noelani Won ’18) welcomes the audience to Grover’s Corners, a small and rather ordinary town in New Hampshire with not much drinking and no culture or love of beauty. Through three acts, she takes us through the lives of the ordinary townsfolk who could be any family in any American town.

The curtains open to an empty stage. The show is performed with very little set, only enough to allow the actors to sit. Everything else is left to the audience’s imagination, even Howie the milkman’s horse Bessie. The Gibbs and Webb families are introduced, and the children sent off to school. Myrtle Webb (Callie Stewart ’17) and Julia Gibbs (Ruby Baden ’17) talk about their husbands and their dreams, all while stringing some beans for the winter. The actors take us through choir practice, town gossip, and even a blossoming crush between George Gibbs (Nigel Goldsborough ’16) and Emily Webb (Sam Jenkins ’17). Act One closes with Rebecca Gibbs (Maddie Laudeman ’17) asking her brother questions about the universe while pondering the moon.

Act Two finds both families in anticipation for a big event – George and Emily’s wedding day. A flashback provided by the stage manager reveals the lovely couple’s romantic history, which is summed up in one day. Over strawberry ice cream sodas, the two teenagers progress from discussing perfection to admitting their true feelings for one another to getting engaged. No more agricultural school for George then. Coming back to the wedding, both bride and groom get cold feet, but are brought back to the altar by their respective parents. Louella Soames (Morgan Peck ’16) cannot contain her joy over the lovely wedding and the happiness awaiting the couple.

On that optimistic note comes the more somber final act. A good portion of the townsfolk the audience met are now dead, and they are joined by Emily who died during childbirth. Emily asks for one more day among the living and, at the caution of the more experienced spirits, chooses a rather ordinary day. As she relives her twelfth birthday, she realizes just how precious life is and just how blind humans are in their living. Saddened by this revelation, she goes back to her grave, where she and the others resume their vigil for the great beyond that is soon to come to them. As a distraught George lies over her grave, Emily speaks with her mother-in-law about his lack of understanding that something greater is waiting after death.