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Arguably the only play in English since Shakespeare to stand alongside the great tragedies. Reaching the emotional depths of KING LEAR, OUR TOWN is at once epic, the story of generations, and of a nation at a very specific place and time; and ultra-modern in its inward turning of the heroic eye to the everyday person for whom the awesomest of tragedies is nothing other than the simple human condition. There are few plays since the Classical Era elicit such pity, which achievement is in a very practical sense a fulfillment of Wilder's lifelong love of those great texts. Like the very greatest works of art, the play is deeply humanistic. OUR TOWN can be said to both prefigure and encapsulate the entire 20th century in theater, and is perhaps more remarkable in that it is a work entirely devoid of cynicism. OUR TOWN is one of a very small number of plays that creates a fully realized, vivid world through language only, and is perhaps singular in that it is most often most effectively staged in community theater by non-professional actors. I know of no other work that can make this claim. The only caveat is that it must be witnessed, live, for like WAITING FOR GODOT and MOTHER COURAGE, it is among our purest works of modern theater.