Word: grovers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Town Wilder brings the usually unseen Stage Manager on stage. We see him suggest the Locale--Grover's Corners. New Hampshire--by bringing in some plain wooden chairs and a couple of tables, to which are added, as needed, a plank and, for a second-story window scene, a pair of step ladders. The Stage Manager also narrates background for us, guides the players, bridges time gaps, comments on what happens, doubles as a druggist, minister and an unnamed the woman (in early drafts of the play he took on several of the children's roles to boot), and dismisses...
...city except Boston, where its chilly reception caused the run to be halved. Actually, Wilder's technique here evolved out of his own one-act plays of 1931, especially Pullman Car Hiawatha, where we find no scenery, minimal props, the versatile Stage Manager, and even the very name of Grover's Corners (located in Ohio this time, however), not to mention the prototype of Emily's valedictory apostrophe to the world...
...cast of players who portray a sizeable sample of the 2642 inhabitants of Grover's Corners touchingly and devotedly serve the script that Wilder said was "an attempt to find a value above all price for the smallest events in our daily life." The characters all talk pretty much the same way, but Wilder could not have fashioned their colloquial speech without a keen ear and much hard work...
...turned 30; but the years have been kind to him, and he has no trouble passing for a lad half his age. He comes by his accent naturally, since he was born and raised in Goffstown, New Hampshire, which is near add not unlike the Grover's Corners that the Stage Manager so precisely pinpoints as to longitude and latitude. Backus' George is admirable all the way from awkward adolescence to bereaved husband. A useful preparation for this role was Backus' appealing portrayal, at Harvard's Loeb Theater in 1970, of the similar small town New England teenager...
...Town. One does not so much attend this play as visit it the way one would Williamsburg. Grover's Corners is a turn-of-the-century New Hampshire town with its simple verities and its Godfearing townsfolk perfectly restored...