QuickTake:

The Oregon Contemporary Theatre extended its run of the 1938 Thornton Wilder play to June 7.

A mother fusses over her son. A daughter hates a dress she has to wear. A teenager confesses his feelings: The residents of Grover’s Corner have been living, marrying and dying like this in “Our Town,” Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play about a fictional small New Hampshire community, for the last 87 years.

The play, which ended a run on Broadway in New York City earlier this year helmed by the actor Jim Parsons, is a staple of American drama. 

It’s still running on Broadway — in downtown Eugene. The play is now the final show of the Oregon Contemporary Theatre’s 2024-25 season. The OCT run of “Our Town,” originally scheduled to close this weekend, has been extended through June 7.

Craig Willis, a co-director of “Our Town” and the theater’s producing artistic director since 2003, said the show was extended because strong early sales “warranted the opportunity to let more people see it.”

“This nearly 90-year-old play still speaks quite eloquently to life experience today, and probably for all time,” Willis said. 

Updating a ‘timeless’ classic 

Making a play that premiered in 1938 work in 2025 requires some tweaks. Willis said the production avoided period-specific costuming and diversified the cast with people of color to make it speak to a contemporary audience.

Amy Robbins and Josh Simpson, both playing the Stage Manager in a production of "Our Town" at the Oregon Contemporary Theatre, stand side-by-side on stage. Amy, on the left, has short dark hair and wears a patterned long-sleeved shirt tucked into plaid pants with a belt. Josh, a bald man with a beard, is on the right, leaning his arm on Amy's shoulder. He wears a striped collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up and dark suspenders over dark pants with his hands in his pockets. In the background, a wooden chair is visible on a raised platform.
Amy Robbins and Josh Simpson play the Stage Manager across different scenes in the Oregon Contemporary Theatre’s production of “Our Town.” Co-director Craig Willis said the production wanted to avoid casting the elder statesman archetype that frequently plays the Stage Manager. Credit: Bob Williams / Bob Williams Photography

The largest shift is around the casting of the show’s narrator, the Stage Manager. The Stage Manager is a fourth-wall breaking character who guides the audience through the story, introduced as a play called “Our Town.”

The character is usually played by an actor fitting an elder statesman archetype. Willis said the production purposefully avoided that kind of actor in casting the role, concerned that it could read as misogynistic when the character interrupts the women in the play and tells them to end their conversations, to keep the story moving along. 

In the production, there are two Stage Managers, played by Amy Robbins and Josh Simpson across different scenes. The women of Grover’s Corner are ushered offstage by Robbins, who also recites the play’s famous “Babylon” speech. 

“That plays differently coming from a woman,” Willis said.

Why the play resonates, 87 years on

The play features an intergenerational cast as a slice-of-life of Grover’s Corner, but orbits around the Gibbs and Webb families and the romance between schoolmates George Gibbs and Emily Webb. 

The actress who plays Mrs. Webb is not new to the role. Vanessa Greenway first played the mother of two and wife to a newspaper editor when she was 19 years old in an undergraduate theater workshop production. (If you’re tall, she said, you play mothers from an early age.)

Greenway’s performance this time is informed by having more life experiences, like becoming a mother and dealing with her parents’ aging. She said she realized how much she didn’t get the role when she was 19 years old, and how different it feels now. 

“It’s like a great big punch in the gut every night,“ she said. 

Zayne Clayton, a senior at the University of Oregon studying classics and the actress playing Emily, said that so many actresses have played the character at some point, that meant the cast had an arsenal of Emily wisdom for her to incorporate.

Zayne Clayton stands on a dimly lit stage, looking up and to the right, in a production of "Our Town" at the Oregon Contemporary Theatre where she plays Emily Webb. She has dark, wavy hair pulled back, and she is wearing an olive-green blouse
Zayne Clayton, a senior studying classics at the University of Oregon, plays Grover’s Corners teen Emily Webb in “Our Town” at the Oregon Contemporary Theatre. Credit: Bob Williams / Bob Williams Photography

“I’m so lucky to be part of all of the Emilys that have come and gone,” she said.

For audiences, the show’s touchpoints make it familiar to their own lives and communities. Eric Braman, a Springfield-based artist who was in the audience on May 29, said one reason the show still resonates is the prevalence of small towns like Grover’s Corner, where residents can carry what they called a “mentality of being forgotten.” 

“There’s tons of forgotten in the U.S.,” they said. 

But for 75-year old Eugene resident Barbara Moore, who saw the play that same night, it was about remembering. “It makes me think of my parents,” she said. 

How to see “Our Town” 

A playbill for "Our Town" at the Oregon Contemporary Theatre, taken by someone in the crowd holding up the playbill with a sparse set design visible in the background.
“Our Town” runs at the Oregon Contemporary Theatre through June 7. Credit: Annie Aguiar / Lookout Eugene-Springfield

“Our Town,” co-directed by Willis, Brian Haimbach and Inga Wilson, is running through June 7 at the Oregon Contemporary Theatre, located at 194 W. Broadway in downtown Eugene. The run time is approximately two hours and 10 minutes. 

Tickets are on sale for all remaining performances.

Limited tickets are available for 7:30 p.m shows this Saturday, May 31, as well as the June 1 Sunday matinee show at 2 p.m. There will be a talk back open to the public after the June 1 performance. 

More tickets are available for the 7:30 p.m. shows next week, on June 6 and 7. 

Tickets start at $25 for seats closer to the stage, and range from $40-50 for seats with better sightlines. Student tickets cost $20.

Annie Aguiar is the Arts and Culture Correspondent. She has reported arts news and features for national and local newsrooms, including at the Seattle Times, the Washington Post and most recently as a reporting fellow for the New York Times’ Culture desk covering arts and entertainment.