THORNTON WILDER
At the Connelly Theater, 220 E. Fourth St.; SmartTix, (212) 868-4444. Through July 18.
THORNTON Wilder was a dazzlingly original dramatist who liked to take ordinary people on miraculous journeys.
His most famous example of this is the 1938 “Our Town,” which uses a Stage Manager to place the New Hampshire village of Grovers Corners in the pulse of the universe.
“Our Town” was Wilder’s first full-length play, but he had been up to his modernist and metaphysical tricks at least since 1931, when he wrote two-acts, “The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden” and “Pullman Car ‘Hiawatha,’ ” both now being superbly and sensitively done by the Keen Company.
The first of the plays, “The Happy Journey,” is simplicity itself. The Kirbys and their children, a girl of 15 and a boy of 13, drive down to Camden to visit Beulah, the eldest, married Kirby child who’s just lost a baby.
A Stage Manager, while smoking his pipe and reading a newspaper, plays all the subordinate parts, from neighbors waving goodbye to guys selling gas. The family gazes at and enjoys the Jersey landscape; Ma gets mad at the son for a flip remark about God. It is a journey whose very ordinariness becomes special. And yet there is something more – a sense that life is composed of just such moments.
Carl Forsman provides the sensitive direction and Ann Dowd is very sympathetic as the mother, fussy and dogmatic but basically warm and loving. Jonathan Hogan is excellent as the Stage Manager (a figure that recurs in “Our Town”), a sort of detached supervisor of all mortals.
“Pullman Car ‘Hiawatha’ ” takes us on a crowded train going from New York to Chicago. The passengers include a madwoman, a gravely ill woman and a lovelorn young man, while a Stage Manager pops up to introduce all sorts of extra-dramatic presences along the way.
The whole universe, past and present, is linked to the progress of this train through the night: The ghost of a worker killed years ago haunts the tracks; on the upper level of the stage, beautiful girls discussing philosophy appear, and the planets hum.
It’s brilliantly directed by Henry Wishcamper and beautifully acted by Hogan, who again plays the Stage Manager, and the rest of the cast.
In a way, with their crisp pace and quick wit, these two plays are as delightful and enjoyable as anything that came later. Indeed, Wilder has moved right up behind O’Neill as the prime American dramatist of the 20th cen^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^tury.