Winesburg, Ohio, Steppenwolf Theatre Company. No one would ever confuse this suffocating Buckeye burg with the idyllic Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire (though Sherwood Anderson’s influence on the mood, characterization, even dialogue of Our Town is palpable). Eric Rosen’s swift-moving but broadly drawn 70-minute stage adaptation faithfully reproduces Anderson’s conditional compassion for small-town “grotesques,” tenderly exploiting his hick stereotypes. This antinostalgic vision of a turn-of-the-century tank town includes a repressed minister, falsely accused pedophile, jilted girl, closet drunk, mercenary hotel keeper, horny schoolmarm, and ambitious reporter George Willard, who records their frustrations. Patrick Sarb plays the author’s surrogate with wide-eyed wonder–the only innocence Anderson or Rosen allows.
