What is it to be known?

Most of us wish to live in harmony with our neighbours, as we all know there are various politicians and political parties who clearly attempt to find reasons to instil a sense of difference and division. The aim is not to harmonise, but to homogenise. What is disappointing (understatement) is the way in which media outlets, once respectable and respectful now collude to promote outrage and hatred. The coverage of the by-election won by Hannah Spencer both before and after the actual local vote is an appalling display of ignorance.

Story is important, it’s how we reflect who we are and how we hope to be. I was at the preview of the opening of Our Town at the wonderful local Rose Theatre in Kingston. The American play by Thornton Wilder (1938) has been described as a great American play. The central theme is that life is brief and we all fail to appreciate the joy of the mundane or ordinary.

Set in a fictional town Grovers Corners in the north eastern US State of New Hampshire touching the Canadian border, the region was home to natives like the Abenaki, until the Europeans arrived in the 1600s. The area renamed as New Hampshire in 1629. It is 1901 and only 35 years since the end of slavery, but of course not segregation. As I hadn’t read the programme notes prior to the performance I found Director Francesca Goodridge’s choice to set it in Wales yet to retain all the American names, terms and social icons whilst delivered as though set in the Rhonda valley to be an odd one.

It caused me to wonder how the Welsh might consider an affinity with New Hampshire. We can acknowledge the wars between the “English” and “Welsh” or at least Saxons since records began in the 5^th century, a vast amount history and fighting over the control of land, with the first war of Welsh independence in 1277.

You may think I’m projecting more than is there, but surely we are all living through a period when misplaced nostalgia and a sense of historic cultural identity are very much being used to divide people around who truly ‘belongs’. So this seems like an odd and deliberate choice, to once again extol virtues that didn’t exist and the cultural norms based on little of substance, sharing the commonality of a lack of thoughtfulness.

Wilder exposes us to the competing churches, of essentially the same religion, division already calcified and formalised, which is certainly a Welsh experience. The socially approved singular pathway to happiness of marriage, children and death. These are currently politicised, with Reform and misogynists contemplating taxing childless women (all a part of the eugenics and replacement theory nonsense) and a vile toxic male culture fostered online by some dreadful examples of ‘men’ who seem eager to tell women how to be and what families are, whilst never having one or abandoning those that they have.

Central characters George and Emily marry, but with a sense of forced urgency passed off as nerves, seeming to lack time for a thoughtful discussion about what each might want from life, but to simply follow the path set down by their ancestors, with George taking over his uncle’s farm rather than heading off to further education (How Green is My Valley? anyone…) So I’m not sure if Goodridge was merely pointing to a smalltown mentality and the commonly shared experiences of life – but why not change the terms? Isn’t the point of a common experience to relate rather than replicate? There is a sense in which Wilder seems to bemoan the changes ushered by progress, the arrival of the motor car and locking doors, the growth of the town yet the sense of familiarity as those who leave return and almost everyone stays. The newsworthy gossip and the suggestion that Policing was once friendly and amenable and newspapers were fair.  It is these nostalgic notions that politicians attempt to exploit.

Wilder, like all of us, a product of his time, doesn’t appear to have anyone in his fictional town of any other ethnicity. There is an ability to witness depression, hardship and struggle, dress it up as stoicism and resilience whilst ignoring any attempt to engage, remedy and repair; failing to encourage thoughtful different approaches. To my mind this isn’t a very Welsh approach, a nation that has protested and fought hard for positive, inclusive social change. The community of Grovers Corners seems to be pretending that everyone is happy, as Mrs Soames exclaims, “I’m sure they’ll be happy. I always say: happiness, that’s the great thing! The important thing is to be happy.”

A Director makes choices, the cast all worked extremely hard on their execution of a precise and energetic living set, but I found the play to be reductionist and overly simplistic. Michael Sheen plays the Stage Manager, a role that’s been performed by Henry Fonda, Paul Newman and Alan Alda and he is a wonderful actor (and a very decent human).  I’m just not convinced that the play is really terribly worthy.

Your financial plan is a reflection of your values and is arguably a record of your story, full of major and minor events, but any good plan starting with the end in mind – the goal to make your own meaningful life, rather than meaning made from it by others. Context is everything, adapting to circumstance and reality whilst holding firm to values that actually matter to you rather than social expectations. Whilst Wilder reminds us of the brevity of life and to appreciate the time we have, I think he fails to convey the complexity, the nuance of the struggle of living in the present whilst having a mind for the future. In my opinion, It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) is a far better take on the same ideas.

Anyway, as ever, make up your own mind. Here is the promotional trailer.

References:

New Hampshire “Official” History: https://www.nh.gov/almanac/history

Native Nations Institute: https://nni.arizona.edu/

Welsh History: https://hwb.gov.wales/resources/welsh-history

Taxing Childless Women Comment: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2026/02/19/sophia-money-coutts-declining-birth-rate/

Kruger rant : https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/24/reform-danny-kruger-uk-totally-unregulated-sexual-economy

Its a Wonderful Life: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038650/

Welsh National Theatre Our Town Information: https://www.welshnationaltheatre.com/our-town

Kingston Rose : https://www.rosetheatre.org/whats-on/our-town-m74x

Our Town – Thornton Wilder: https://thorntonwilder.com/our-town

Replacement theory nonsense: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/08/a-deadly-ideology-how-the-great-replacement-theory-went-mainstream