Thornton Wilder's Our Town Give's Ann Patchett's Tom Lake A Wonderful Theater-centric Flavor

Thornton Wilder's Our Town Gives Ann Patchett's Tom Lake a Wonderful Theater-centric  Flavor 

by Elyse Sommer

Outstanding new cultural offerings tend to be outnumbered by those that are ho-hum. Even creators of  proven standouts (novelists as well as playwrights) now and then disappoint. Not so Ann Patchett,  author of the Pulitzer-Prize -winning Bel Canto and other top-drawer novels. Her oeuvre now includes  the better-than-ever Tom Lake.

While Patchett doesn't write John Grisham-like thrillers, she sure knows how to draw readers. Her storytelling mastery will have you turning the pages of this dual-timeline story about a farm family's interactions during the pandemic and flashbacks to 57-year-old Lara Nelson's life and love affair as an  actress thirty years ago.  

The role of Our Town's Emily, which launched and dominated Lara's long-ago life, and the parallels to Thornton Wilder's play, are linked in with wonderful subtlety. To be specific: The Nelson farm has a  cemetery like Our Town's Grover's Corners. The oldest daughter is named for the character whose  portrayal won her mother a chance to perform with a summer stock company located at a place called  Tom Lake.

Emily Nelson, the daughter, just wants to be a good farmer like her dad. But her  mother, like many  young people's parents, could tell stories of different aspirations in their younger lives. One of Emily's  two sisters is indeed a wannabe thespian.

Besides Our Town's pivotal link to Tom Lake's dual narrative, the author has also imbued the book with  a distinct Chekhovian flavor. Since the Nelsons grow cherries, their story evokes Chekhov's The  Cherry Orchard; and the fact that they struggle to keep the farm flourishing and that the Nelson sisters  are not too happily back together because of the pandemic channels my own favorite Chekhov play,  Three Sisters.

Despite the novel's theatrical episodes and frequent references to classical theatrical and fictional literature, Tom Lake is an easily relatable contemporary family drama. The episodes about Lara's youthful life and love affair with a charismatic actor who went on to become a famous movie star  makes for fascinating detours from Lara 's own eventual life as a happily married farm wife and  devoted mother.  
 
For theater buffs like me, details about life at that summer stock company are a special  treat.   However, Patchett manages to insure that readers understand and enjoy what's going on whether   they're familiar with Our Town's plot or the company's second production -- Sam Shepherd's Fool for  Love. By structuring the flashbacks between the farm and the theater company, she maintains a degree  of suspense and allows for something of a surprise ending.   

Tom Lake's beginning establishes that the Nelson girls know about their mother's early career and love affair. But busy as they are helping to harvest the cherries, boredom at the end of these work days, and  the news that their mother's movie-star lover has died, trigger their nudging her for full  details. Patchett makes brilliant use of this set up to create a  richly populated, absorbing and intelligent story. Bravo!
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Both hard cover and  digital  editions of Tom Lake are currently  available. There's also an audio book  read by Meryl Streep. (Where isn't Streep offering up her talents these days?)

Is the Theater Back to its Pre-pandemic Pleasures? By Elyse Sommer

 
Is the Theater Back to its Pre-pandemic Pleasures?

By Elyse Sommer

There are indeed signals for optimism that the worst of the pandemic is over, at least in the theater.    Long shuttered Broadway venues have reopened and this first comeback season was quite robust.  

The Tony Awards, the season's annual revenue-jumping event that almost didn't happen, did happen.   What's more, it was a justly praised success, even though the striking screenwriters allowed the broadcast to go on only if the host and presenters did not use a script. This made for a show that ended  on time and allowed some shows running on Broadway but not nominated to have a chance to strut  their stuff. Instead of at Radio City Music Hall, this year's event was held in the smaller historic Harlem movie palace that was a suitable site to showcase the diverse but all too timely issues dominating the  theatrical landscape.  

The two biggest winners, Kimberly Akimbo and Leopoldstadt, reminded us that ageism and anti-semitism remain toxic prejudices still with us. David Lindsay-Abaire's adaptation of his play and Tom Stoppard's epic family saga took the Tonys for best musical and best play.  

There were numerous surprise nominees, like the literally corny musical Shucked, which won over fun-hungry, pandemic-weary audiences and critics and became more than the dinner-theater musical it  would have been thanks to smart directing and casting. A surprise nominee who won was British  actress Jodie Comer. She nabbed best leading actress (in the solo play Prima Facie) from the multi-award winner Audra McDonald, who finally gave Adrienne Kennedy's Ohio State Murders a  Broadway stage life.

For a complete list of all the awards, see https://www.tonyawards.com/

Even though many of these nominees and winners received high praise from critics, most didn't fill all  the seats before the Tony jump started the usual day-after uptick in ticket sales. The win for Prima  Facie made it one of the best post-Tony sellers and people who missed seeing the play on  Broadway will be able to see it on screen, with Cynthia Erivo in the demanding role.

The many announced productions for next season do indeed support the optimism about bringing back the pleasure and excitement of theater before the long pandemic lockdown. Some of the more intriguing items on next season's theatrical menu include new plays by two of my favorite playwrights: John  Patrick Shanley and Paula Vogel. An as yet untitled play by Vogel will open at the Hayes Theater and  Brooklyn Laundry by Shanley at Manhattan Theatre Club.

Furthermore, Vogel's legendary How I Learned to Drive and Shanley's Doubt are coming back. The  Vogel revival reunites David Morse with Mary Louise Parker and some of the other original cast members at the Friedman Theater. Shanley's Doubt will star Liev Schreiber and Tyne Daly. While the focus on issues of tolerance is clearly here to stay, it was very much on the minds of golden oldie  storytellers like Vogel and  Shanley.  

https://playbill.com/category/broadway-news will point you to plenty of other upcoming   productions that will support the optimism about the return to normalcy.
 
But not so fast. We're hardly 100% back to full recovery. The constantly rising costs of putting on a  show have  done in The Phantom of the Opera's remarkable run at the Majestic Theatre. Costs and the  still slow return of tourists also did in Stomp, a modest downtown show that, like Phantom became as  much an event as a theater outing. This struggle to stay alive has rippled elsewhere. One of the Berkshire summer season's mainstays, the Williamstown Theatre, skipped a whole season of full-bodied new productions. In California, the Center Theatre Group is shutting down its Mark Taper Forum for at least a year.

 And so, while it's good and bad news when it comes to the theater, the news cycle in our daily lives  continues to be unrelentingly scary and depressing and repetitive. Consequently, I find it more comforting to spend time with fictional political influencers like President Conrad Dalton and  Secretary of State Elizabeth McCord of the seven-season series hit, Madam Secretary. While the  weekly crises that Tea Leoni's Secretary of State tackled reflected world events during the time the  series was first filmed, it still has incredible currency these days. Even when re-watched, the terrific  cast and production values still make for attention-holding, informative entertainment. The difference  between the series and real life is that disaster is always avoided -- and in the interest of doing the right thing. If only our real world were on such solid ground.

Among the other spirit-lifting series I've caught up with or revisited are the new addition to the superb  Danish political series Borgen; The  Dedicated  Survivor and the delightful Last Tango in Halifax.