Facebook X Email Print Save Story On a cloudy afternoon in Peterborough, New Hampshire, apron-wearing workers emerged from a green nineteen-fifties lunch car, stood behind a banner that read “The Peterboro Diner Welcomes You to Grover’s Corners,” and said things like “The beautiful people are coming!” and “Geez, Louise!” Two charter buses arrived and out they came: Jim Parsons, Katie Holmes, Ephraim Sykes, Zoey Deutch, Richard Thomas, and two dozen other cast and crew members of the new Broadway revival of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” which begins previews this week. “Welcome, welcome!” the diner’s owner, Melanie Neily, said. The visitors, after a five-hour drive, gamely greeted their hosts and proceeded inside for lunch; they resembled regular tourists, except for the slightly suspicious glamour of Deutch (Emily Webb) and Holmes (Mrs.
Webb), who both wore fashionable sunglasses and bright-marigold tops, and for the hero’s welcome that Neily, a “Waltons” fan, gave to a gracious Richard Thomas (Mr. Webb). Inside, Parsons (the Stage Manager) and Julie Halston (Mrs.
Soames), settled into a booth, and a video of “Our Town” with Paul Newman played above the counter. It was the cast’s first meeting, and the director, Kenny Leon, wanted it to be memorable. Wilder wrote some of “Our Town” in Peterborough, at the MacDowell Colony, and the town has proudly claimed it since its première, in 1938.
Leon’s production, advertised as “an ‘Ou.