[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart. Coming up tomorrow on the show, we'll speak to the author of Building Material: The Memoir of a Park Avenue Doorman. And we'll talk about Broadway's Suffs with its star, Nikki James, and director Leigh Silverman. That's in the future. Now let's get this hour started with Our Town. [music]

Until this year, the play Our Town has run on Broadway five times. This 6th version, playing now at the Barrymore Theatre, is as refreshing as it is classic. We watch as Emily Webb, a gifted student, falls in love with sweet George Gibbs, gets married and in the famous third act, faces death head on. Emily is played by actor Zoey Deutch in her Broadway debut. Grover's Corner is the same and the fact that the Webb family is Black and that the milkman, Howie Newsom, is deaf and signs his lines, and the other members of Grover's Corner sign back, is really not a big deal. Which makes it perfect for Our Town.

The show is not about the big things in life, but the small things. The new production, directed by Kenny Leon, is a New York Times Critic's Pick. It's a masterclass in acting, including Jim Parsons, Bill Eugene Jones, Katie Holmes, Richard Thomas, Ephraim Sykes, to name a few. And our next guest, Zoey Deutch, who's playing Emily. Hi, Zoey.

Zoey Deutch: Hello.

Alison: As well as friend of the show, Kenny Leon. Hi, Kenny.

Kenny Leon: Hey, what's up?

Alison: It's all good. So, Zoey, I read that you had this play on your nightstand when you were just 13?

Zoey: Yes, and the nightstand has changed. It has changed, but the play has remained next to my bed wherever I've lived, for sure.

Alison: What about this play resonated with you even at a young age?

Zoey: Well, it just kept changing every time I read it, which is the beauty of this piece. Depending on where you are in your life and what you're seeing that day and what you're feeling that day, it changes. And that was the part that really just struck me, that it felt like a different play every time I read it. But it still always reminded me to appreciate my life and the people I get to spend it with. And it felt like the greatest that is art, right? That it just forces you to look up and go, wow, look at this. So I just, I fell in love with it.

Alison: Kenny, this play doesn't have an intermission. It runs a little over an hour and a half. You're a man who loves pacing. It's very important to you. What does it do to the story to have this be one whole entity?

Kenny: Well, first of all, Allison, I want to say hello to you because I know last time I talked with you, you were fighting some health challenges, and it's just great to see you. And I just want to check in to see how are you doing.

Alison: Okay. I'm doing well. I'm doing well. You don't know this, but I had brain surgery about seven, eight months ago. There are some challenges, but I get up every day and I do it. That's the thing. You just keep trying. So thank you for asking.

Kenny: It's great to see you. But, yeah, to answer your question, it's like to do this play without an intermission, it further reinforces the idea of our limited time on the planet, our time where we don't know how our health is going to be. It's our time with each other, so I think not having an intermission puts value on our time, and we get to see daily life, marriage and love and afterlife, all in one sitting, you know? And like we say in the play, one day you're 20 and then swish, you're 70. Goes by fast, you know?

I love the idea of community sitting together with our great actors, and we all become one community, sitting there together, sharing this 90 minutes together and I don't know. I don't know if the director was smart or not, but whoever directed this and thought about not having intermissions, I think he was a pretty smart guy.

Alison: Zoey, when you're thinking about Emily in that first act, what do you think she wants out of life? What do you think her hopes are?

Zoey: Well, she's a very-- she's curious and she's full of joy and she's just, I think she's just excited to see what life has to offer. But, yeah, I'm not sure if that's a good answer, but--

Alison: That's a fine answer. Kenny, Jim Parsons is so good in his role as the stage manager, and that's a tricky part to get right. First of all, what is his job in the show? What is his job as a stage manager?

Kenny: Well, first of all, I think when you think about this play, I like thinking about the novel Tom Lake. If you don't have an Emily, you don't have a play, and I think Zoey just, she's the heart of the play. And for her to embrace such an iconic role and to get on that stage eight shows a week is just a testament to her greatness. So I start with there, because Emily is the heart of this show. And next, Jim is-- to follow such great actors. What's the last guy that did it? Paul Newman, Jason Robards, to follow that caliber of actor.

I think that Jim has made it his own. I think his pacing is different. I think his engagement is different. I think his care as one of the community, I think it's different. I think when he leaves the stage, we see a person or feel a person who cares about humanity. And there is probably, I mean, there's no greater combination of actor and person than Jim Parsons. His abilities on stage, but his care as a human being, it's like that combination you don't find anywhere. He is a great artist to work with, and Zoey and I have had a great time with him, but it starts with his leadership skills and then it transfers to Zoey's heart.

Zoey: One of the things I just want to add that's so, I find so beautiful every day, every show, is we start the piece all together. But Jim, the second he steps on stage, it's like I feel the cast, but then I feel the audience now just immediately sink into their chair, feel safe in his arms because of who he is as a human being, but also about how he's playing this part with such warmth and you trust that he is going to guide you through this story and hold your heart in his safely, with care. It is such an intense piece and the way that he moves through the story, you feel safe with him.

And it's a beautiful thing to experience altogether, at first just as the team of 28 actors, but now inviting all the, however many people come. What is it, 1,300 people? So much of the play is about community and Kenny was so brilliant about constantly reminding that to us. Now we feel that community aspect bringing everybody, all these 1,300 stranger souls into our community. And he's the person that really is the captain of that ship every night.

Kenny: Another thing I would like to say about Jim, and I've run into this with people who've seen the play. This probably is the most produced play in America historically. But people have ideas about the play and how it should be presented and who should be in it. We have a very diverse cast. It wasn't cast that way in 1936, but we have diversity in every way. We have a great deaf actor, John McGinty, who's incredible. Racially, culturally, it's mixed all up. But what we do by casting Jim Parsons as a stage manager, and I'm sure he wouldn't mind me saying this, but Jim is a gay male, great human being, and I asked him to lean into you.

All these actors on stage, 70% of it is leaning into their own identity and then 30% of the character, and by doing that, we include more people in this great play. I think right away we say it's a play. The role Jim is playing is called stage manager. It's a play. So I think by Jim giving us permission to lean into his own personal identity is a great sacrifice and a great contribution to what we do every night.

Alison: I'm speaking with director Kenny Leon and actor Zoey Deutsch about their new production of Our Town. It's running now at the Barrymore Theater. Kenny, what did you and designer, Beowulf Boritt, discuss about the set? Because it's fairly sparse.

Kenny: Well, with the set, Wilder suggests it be minimalistic, but we said, let's push it as far into minimalism as possible. So when people who've seen the play think about the play, they say, what about those ladders? And I was like, no, no, no. First thing we're going to lose are the ladders. You know what I mean? So we lose that. The next thing people remember is the play starts with one actor on stage setting it up. I said, no, no, we're not going to start with one person on stage. We're going to start with all 28 eternal spirits, eternal beings on stage, so it becomes more of a community activity.

Beowulf was amazing to design, like even the lights, the lights above our head. They could be lights, they could be lanterns, they could be stars, they could be souls. But it brings a spiritual weight to the play that sometimes is not there. I thank Allen Lee Hughes, who I call the GOAT of lighting design, who's never won a Tony award, but he should win a Tony award one day because he has such a great touch. And with those lanterns above our heads that form a question mark, it forms a big question mark. Where are we? What are we going to do? How are we going to treat each other? How are we going to spend our time with each other?

I am so lucky to be on the planet with Alison. I am glad that I am living my life, and you and I are sharing the planet at the same time. You, me, Zoey, you know what I mean? If I was born in the Wild West, that would be a different thing. I am totally content to spend my time with these human beings. Dede Ayite did the costumes and, oh my God, I think these 28 beings, spiritual, eternal beings, are from all different times of American history. So she's been able to combine clothes from all periods of time, so she's been great. Justin Ellington is doing the sound and that's really amazing as well.

Alison: Sounds like [inaudible 00:12:18] [crosstalk]

Zoey: Kenny really pushed, really was such an amazing leader in all aspects for all of us in reminding us what the core values of this play are, and one of them being-- I kept imagining in rehearsals how much Thornton would love Kenny, honestly.

Alison: That's sweet.

Zoey: I felt his spirit. I would smile sometimes and be like, "I bet Thornton would be like, God, I love this guy." I love what he's-- that he gets the point of this and one of those is like, we were talking about the stripped down nature of the piece. And that also includes, for people that don't know this play or haven't seen the play, there are no props. And for Thornton, so much of this play was about that life exists in memory and imagination. And Kenny really encouraged us to go deeper and deeper, and when we got scared and wanted to have a proper practice with things or maybe, oh, can we--? No. Let's strip it down as much as we possibly humanly can.

The beauty of this kind of avant garde device of having no props is, it not only makes us actors really use our imagination, it also invites the audience to be more interactive and imagine what we're doing. In a lot of ways, to me, not to go on a tangent, but it feels like this play mixes mediums of both watching a play and reading a book because when you--

Alison: Oh, interesting.

Zoey: Right, because when you read, you imagine and you insert your own ideas of what it could look like. That's why so many people, when they read a book and then they watch the movie, they're like, "But that's not how I imagined her, what she was doing or what--" But with this, you get to do that. When my mom, the beautiful, wonderful Katie Holmes, is cooking me breakfast, no matter what or how specific she is with her pantomimes, you are going to see your mother making you breakfast and what she made you when you were a little girl.

And that is so-- it's avant garde but it's just so beautiful. And yet to go back around, Kenny was doing that with everyone, with all the different departments of, okay, let's keep stripping it down. Let's keep finding it a different way. I think he just did the most beautiful job with it.

Alison: You added music.

Kenny: Thank you.

Alison: You added interesting music to the show.

Kenny: Well, I did, but I started with what Wilder put down. You know what I mean? His theme song throughout the story is Blessed Be The Tides and so I start-- I said why not start the play there? Why not put a piano in the center of the stage already? It makes me have to work with how this is going to look. You put a piano on the stage and say, oh, what do we do now? So you have one of the characters in the play come out and play something on the piano. I don't want to give anything away, but it was great to find a way to integrate music over the last 100 years of our lives in America.

So some of it is like at the wedding, I have a song that Bebe and Cece Winans made famous, you know, like how marriage and love is inseparable. So you throw in that contemporary thing just for a minute because weddings, they're kind of universal, you know what I mean? It's like what I say to the cast about this play, the reason we don't have props is because that's the only thing that changes since the beginning of time, are the props. You don't have a plow, you don't have a shovel.

Zoey: I don't remember you saying that, but that's great, Kenny. [laughs]

Kenny: Now you have a cell phone. You have a cell phone. The cell phone is the furthest thing away from being present with your family.

Alison: Yeah, you have somebody grab the cell phone out and give it [inaudible 00:16:17]

Kenny: That's the first prop we see in the play and then we take that prop away. We're taking that major prop of 2024 away. Now what do you have left? All you have is the same problems and struggles that every person since the beginning of time has had. And it all boils down to love and life and family and death and sorrow and pain and joy. It's the same struggles for millions and millions of years and we still don't have it right. And the play says, yeah, a 10 year old kid can unfortunately pass away. A 30 year old person can get hit by a car. A 90 year old person can pass away.

So it has nothing to do with how long we're here. The key is something else that we're missing, and that is just be present. If you got a minute on the planet, be alive and present that minute, because unfortunately, none of us are going to get out of here alive. That's not the deal. But it's like just finding joy and being with each other when you're there. We're in this, doing this interview on NPR now. We just need to be present. And if we're present with the three of us, then your listeners, they have a chance to be present with you, and then we're all going to get more value out of all of us being present. There is no other way. Everything else, it's like-- And if it's the future or it's the past, fear or anxiety presents itself.

The only safe place is in the moment. That's the only safe place where there's no worry, there's no fear, there's no-- You know what I mean? But we can't get that. We keep saying, oh, but what if I'm not here next year? What if my mom did this? What if my son doesn't graduate? What if-- That's worry, fear. That's not what life is about. All these millions and millions of years, we come into the world as eternal beings. We leave in the same way and we just have to protect what's in the middle, is human life, and we can't even get that right.

Alison: It's interesting to listen to Kenny because, Zoey, young people who come to this, it may be the first time they've ever seen this production. I'm wondering what you hope they will take away from it.

Zoey: Gosh. Well, it's interesting, right? This piece is old, but Our Town, in my opinion, is anything but dated for so many of the-- for the beautiful reasons that Kenny just stated. It's timeless. It's simple, but so, so profound. And it's full of real sentiment, which is not the same as sentimental. It's not sentimental. Someone the other day said, "It's so interesting how unbelievably compelling and beautiful this piece is. There's no conflict. There's no huge event." I said no. As for being uneventful, the event of the play is huge. It's life itself. You're watching life unfold. It's the biggest event that could possibly happen and it's deceptive in that way. Right?

You're like, it's specificity. Grover's Corners becomes all of our towns, and I think I'm just so happy that young people are coming to see it. It's so wonderful to walk out of the theater and see little kids or teenagers and people in my age seeing this for the first time and connecting to the piece and seeing how resonant it is now still, of course.

Alison: Our Town is playing-- [crosstalk] Oh, go ahead.

Kenny: It's interesting to me because there's so many people that write about our show and talk about our show, and what I've come to realize, there are far more people that haven't seen the play, as much as the play is done. And they come to this and they apologize to me. "I'm so sorry. I've never seen the play before." I've run into 60 year old men in tears. One guy said, "I lost my 16 year old last year," and he's in tears. "I lost my 16 year old last year. Thank you for this play." So this play has a way of bringing joy to the sadness, even though it's incredibly sad sometimes. I've seen more men leave the theater crying because it's a [unintelligible 00:20:54] for some of us.

It's a bomb. It's a reminder. It has even helped me. I lost my best friend two years ago. But working on this play, I tell you, it makes me say, oh, man, Gideon, wherever you are, my brother, you're on the good side. You're looking back and you're trying to tell me, like, hey, live life, Leon. Live life. And so it's helped me deal with pain in my life. I'm in Georgia now, visiting my grandkids now. It helps me realize, like, hey, they're gonna be eight and five once. You know what I mean? Like, come on, be there with them when you're there with them. So it's a beautiful play. So I've treated it like it's a world premiere of a new play.

And that's what those wonderful actors, including the great Richard Thomas, that's what they do every night. They say, this is a new play. We don't care. We don't care about-- We bless those other productions. Bless that. But we're sitting in the seats today. We're sitting in seats today. How can the theater feed us? You know what I mean? That's why we became-- that's why we created nonprofit theaters, because we could ask the real questions of us. This is a commercial production, but it's being done like a nonprofit production, because these are big questions and big love, and I hope people continue to come out and support us and see the wonderful work on stage.

Zoey: The thing also I just want to tell you, Kenny, because I haven't, is every time it's-- the third act has become such a spiritual experience for me personally, and every time, and I could-- I can't even believe I could still-- I'm about to tear up. I can't believe I can still still produce tears off stage. I'm doing it eight times a week. But every time I go to the grave, I genuinely feel that the people that I miss that aren't here anymore are okay. That's the beauty of the play. It's not sinking into sadness. For me personally, I'm reminded.

I look up and I see the lanterns and I see the spirits, and I see all the people I miss that are saying, "I'm okay. You can miss me, but I'm okay." Living in that space and that reminder is like, wow, I feel so lucky and I hope I can share with the people here that are missing somebody or many people, that they're okay. And it's not bad over there. It's good. It's great. It's beautiful. It's calm. It's without worry and troubles. And that is just remarkably spiritual to experience and not expect it. For me, I didn't know that that's where it would land and continues to land deeper and deeper. You know?

Kenny: Our Town for our time.

Alison: There you go. It's at the Barrymore Theater. My guests have been Kenny Leon and Zoey Deutch. Thank you so much for time today.

Zoey: Thanks.

Kenny: Love you.

Zoey: Love you. Bye.