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Salient: An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 12, No. 3, April 6th, 1949.

Everyman's Town

Everyman's Town

"Our Town" as the programme says, may be interpreted as grandly or simply as we like. The city born youth is quite entitled to snort at Grover's Corner and flee to his fun parlour and pounding juke box. And equally entitled to snort is the man who has lived all his life in Master-ton or Nelson and had, for his lot, unimaginable pettiness and boredom. For Wilder's town is happier than most. Here we see the peculiar subtleties of such a life and its variations on the commonplace. Personal relations matter a great deal, and a difficult situation, such as the drinking of the Methodist organist, is got over by ignoring it. Most of the people here accept the world surrounding them, so that Philosophy and Psychology would be no longer the handmaidens of God as they are with us. They are primarily doers and not thinkers. William Shakespeare is as remote a public charge as our statue of Queen Victoria. Although there was no scenery, Grover's Corner became as real as Willis Street, and it would have been an easy thing to have strolled on stage with the groups of townsfolk and lazily enjoyed the afternoon sun, when the day "was running down like a tired clock."

It is the third act which does the damage. The stagecraft may be very fine, but I had throughout an uncomfortable evangelical feeling as if I would find myself at any moment on a street corner beating a tambourine.