Soulpepper makes poignant return to Our Town

At this point, it practically is their town.

Although Soulpepper initially carved out its reputation with rarely seen plays, Thornton Wilder's Our Town - one of North America's most widely produced shows - has become the Toronto theatre company's signature.

They premiered director Joseph Ziegler's warm-hearted take on the play in 1999 in what was just their second season, then revived it to open their new theatrical digs in Toronto's Distillery District in 2006.

Our Town is now back for a fourth outing and, with the company headed toward a European-style repertory system, it may eventually establish permanent residence in the Young Centre.

By now, the myth that this 1938 American classic is sentimental drivel solely suited to community theatre should be well put to rest in Toronto. Wilder's three-act ontological tour of the small town of Grover's Corners, N.H., at the beginning of the 20th century might be affixed with such labels as existential or Brechtian if it weren't so popular and lacking in pretentiousness.

Edward Albee, who can hardly be accused of seeing life through rose-coloured glasses, has called it "one of the toughest, saddest, most brutal plays that I've ever come across." I've seen a production that fit that description and left me in a puddle, but Ziegler's doesn't quite. It's poignant, but not devastating. Many of the town's dark corners are under-explored and the tone flip-flops between tough and tender.

The tough-mindedness mainly comes from the women. Nancy Palk (Mrs. Gibbs) and Jane Spidell (Mrs. Webb) give impeccable performances as two proud mothers living lives of quiet domestic desperation, Palk lending Mrs. Gibbs's secret longings for Paris particular pathos.

As Emily Webb, Krystin Pellerin, new to the production, has the hardest job in the final act set in the Grover's Corners graveyard, where she arrives as a new mother, newly deceased. While she does just fine by it - it had me in tears, as it always does - her more tragicomic moments on her wedding day were where her talents shined brightest.

The men in Soulpepper's Our Town are more prone to bring Wilder's play to the brink of whimsy. John Jarvis as Mr. Webb and Jeff Lillico as Emily's neighbour and suitor, George Gibbs, certainly take an aw-shucks Mayberry approach to their characters, particularly when on the stage together.

No complaints about Oliver Dennis's kind but stern Dr. Gibbs, however, or Albert Schultz's magnetic Stage Manager, who is our metatheatrical guide to the three acts, both Beatrice and Virgil on this trek through the heaven and hell of human existence.

If I was granted one wish, it would be for the cast to drop their New Hampshire accents, which hinder rather than help, and, even if they were perfectly executed, would be unnecessary in a play designed to be played without props, scenery or any other ornamentation.

Our Town