Review: Our Town (Rose Theatre)

Review by Lily Melhuish

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

There’s a peculiar sting to realising you’ve missed the peak. You plan the birthday down to the playlist, you spreadsheet the wedding like it’s a military operation, and then the big day arrives, and it’s gone in the blink of an eye. In the post-event haze you remember the one thing you forgot to schedule in: actually enjoying it.

Thornton Wilder’s American classic Our Town is, at heart, a gentle corrective for that very modern ailment. It nudges you to look up from the five‑year plan and notice the bits in between: the routine, the neighbours, the day-to-day that makes up your life. This new production, seen through a Welsh lens and led by Michael Sheen, is a reminder delivered with warmth, wit and a charming sense of play. Even when it gets a little too gooey for its own good, it’s hard not to leave feeling slightly more awake to the world.

Theatre in Wales has taken a bit of a beating in recent years, with funding cuts contributing to the devastating closure of the National Theatre Wales in 2024, so there’s a real sense of significance in watching Sheen step forward as founder and Artistic Director of the new Welsh National Theatre. Our Town as a first venture feels deliberately mission-statement-y: community, loss, resilience, the sacredness of the everyday. A promising opening chapter, here’s hoping it’s the first of many.

One of the joys of Our Town is its built-in ambiguity. It’s a play-within-a-play, that allows, well, play. Metatheatrical by design, with a narrator-cum-stage-manager (Sheen) guiding us through the town of Grover’s Corners. Wilder discourages props in the original text, asking the audience to imagine what isn’t shown. That constraint, done as well as it is here, becomes a kind of theatrical sandpit of minimal tools, maximum invention.

In the Rose Theatre, the stage mechanics are proudly visible: lights hanging in the rig, the theatre’s bones on display. The set is sparse, littered only by planks of wood, humble chairs and ladders, and the occasional stalk of corn on wheels. A stack of planks becomes books, or a church steeple, while a chair dragged across the floor becomes a noisy, whimsical lawnmower. Francesca Goodridge directs the production with noticeable clarity for what has made Our Town stand the test of time, but also how to install the spirit of Wales into this American classic.

This understanding, paired with Jess Williams’ movement direction, are what make this production a spectacle. The choreography is slick, fluid, and understated; integrated so naturally it feels as mundane as walking. The town ripples like a body of water: people weaving in and out, sharing the load, relying on trust and timing, the planks of wood becoming extensions of their bodies. It’s physical storytelling as a second skin, and it allows us to see more than what we’re being shown with stunning conviction.

Ryan Joseph Stafford’s lighting does the work of scenery with impressive clarity: hard white light for Sheen’s direct address, soft warm washes for village life. It divides worlds and times with the simplest of choices, and the result is more evocative than any fussy set change. Dyfan Jones’s music is the perfect companion: present but never intrusive, underscoring the action with a comfortingly unobtrusive flow, like the Sims 2 build-mode soundtrack, but for constructing a life.

Michael Sheen is in his element as the Stage Manager, like some sort of benevolent, omniscient Taskmaster. He breaks the fourth wall with the ease of a seasoned professional such as himself, addressing the audience with a gentle authority. He moseys rather than strides, his pocket-watch checking never tipping into urgency. Dressed in a dapper three-piece suit, paired with a Saint Nicholas-esque beard, he’s like the White Rabbit if the White Rabbit had a Type B personality: aware of time, but fundamentally unbothered, and extremely fluffy.

The first act is essentially a sequence of introductions as we watch everyone go about their business. The cast are uniformly inviting as we’re absorbed into the community, though a few standouts rise just slightly above the rest. Gareth Snook’s Professor Willard is hilarious, waxing lyrical about fossils while Sheen urges him to get to the point, an obvious, yet unspoken competition to out-grandpa each other. Christina Modestou is endlessly charming as Mrs Soames: part enthusiastic wedding guest, part choir soprano, all heart and volume. Rhys Warrington’s strict and stiff choir master is the perfect embodiment of a village busy body, physically carrying the frustration of small-town middle-management.

Once the town is established, the play gently narrows to Emily Webb (Yasemin Özdemir) and George Gibbs (Peter Devlin) and the tender geometry of young love, of one becoming two because, as the play says, “’tain’t natural to be lonesome.” And then, as Sheen keeps reminding us with a soft smile and a dark edge, time does what time does.

This is where the production’s weakness sits: Our Town is intentionally ordinary, teetering on the edge of vanilla. By the final act, the sentiment lands hard, and although it’s well-intentioned, it’s also a touch overinsistent, like being told to put your phone away at dinner (which is good advice, but you’re still going to roll your eyes a bit). The play benefits from the Welsh lens -  the lyrical lilt of speech, the use of Welsh hymns, the communal texture - and oozes a sense of place, even if the script insists it’s New Hampshire, not Newport. But that warmth sometimes becomes a soft-focus filter. At points, it reminded me of Love Island after they took cigarettes and alcohol away: watchable, but a bit too regulated to generate real dramatic heat.

That might be partly down to what the production can’t do. Wilder’s text is 88 years old now, and while its simplicity is its power, it also comes with limitations. You can sense a tug-of-war underneath: a desire to push further into Welsh specificity, or to modernise the pressure points, held back by the shackles of the original text. The show often feels like it wants to say more, then politely remembers that’s not what’s been agreed.

That said, it’s a strong, generous piece of theatre. Beautifully made, smartly paced, and full of craft. And as a launch statement for Welsh National Theatre’s ambitions, it’s a heartfelt one: pay attention, love your people, don’t sleepwalk through your own life.

Our Town plays at Rose Theatre until 28th March 2026, tickets can be found here: https://www.rosetheatre.org/whats-on/our-town-m74x

Photos by Helen Murray