Bill Timoney ’76 is a veteran New York actor who has most recently appeared on Broadway in Network, opposite Bryan Cranston, and Purlie Victorious, with Leslie Odom Jr. His most recent project, which opened on October 10th, is the Broadway revival of the American classic Our Town, by Thornton Wilder.
Our Town, which acclaimed playwright Edward Albee once called “the greatest American play ever written” and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1938, is set in the fictional town of Grover’s Corners between 1901 and 1913 and tells its story through the everyday lives of the town’s citizens. The drama is set in the actual theater in which it is performed, with the ‘Stage Manager’ (Jim Parsons) serving as the main character.
Despite being over a century old, the current production is called an Our Town “for our time”. “Director Kenny Leon has made a very few subtle edits to Wilder's classic text, all with the written consent of his estate,” said Timoney. “He's added some contemporary music, and our costume designer has clothed the cast in wardrobes that seem to suggest different periods, supporting Kenny's theme that this story can happen anywhere at any time! But the text is all Thornton Wilder. What is most clearly different is that our cast is multi-racial, and some of our actors are also performers with disabilities. There may not have been non-white people living in Grover's Corners N.H. back in 1901, but a story of "our time" looks very different now than it
did back then.”
The play spans a dozen years and features a large ensemble cast of twenty-eight performers; it is performed in three acts, the first of which deals with daily life, the second with ‘love and marriage’ and the third with ‘death and eternity’. “It’s a very large cast for a contemporary non-musical play, though not unusual for a
play written in the 1930s,” Timoney reports. “Our director, Kenny Leon, and our lead producer, Jeffrey Richards, are highly skilled at matching personalities to create a cast that will come together as a single team, not an easy task in an industry known for eccentric characters.
Chemistry is tough to create...but Kenny and Jeffrey can do it.” The cast features several well-known actors, including Richard Thomas (John-Boy from the class TV series, The Waltons), Katie Holmes (Batman Begins) and Zoey Deutch (Beautiful Creatures), as well as multiple Emmy winner, Jim Parsons of The Big Bang Theory. “Audiences expecting to see ‘Sheldon on stage’ will indeed be pleasantly surprised by
Jim's characterization as the Stage Manager,” Timoney says. “Jim is a ‘creature of the theatre’
who began his career doing high school musicals and college plays.”
Indeed, Timoney is excited about both the show, the cast and even the theater they’re
performing it! “The entire cast is comprised of top-tier professionals who show up to work without any
sense of elitism,” he said. “We're all just actors putting on a play. I love creating with them!” he
says. “We're at the Ethel Barrymore Theater on West 47th, one of Broadway's most historic
theaters where the original production of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire
played, and I like to think that I have Marlon Brando's old dressing room! We close on January
19th because the next day, Kenny Leon begins rehearsals for his next Broadway production:
Shakespeare's Othello starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal, which begins
performances on February 24th at the same Barrymore Theater!”
A group of SJR students and faculty members plan to see Our Town in the coming weeks. “Many of our most distinguished artists of the American theatre agree: Thornton Wilder's Our Town is the greatest American play ever written,” says Timoney. “Please come see why. You'll be glad you did!”