The new production of the canonical American play, directed by Kenny Leon, sees the classic through through a contemporary lens.

With so much turmoil in the world, it’s at least a little comforting that things haven’t changed much in Grover’s Corners, the place that gives Our Town, Thornton Wilder’s beloved 1938 report from Smalltown USA, its name. People there are born, love and die without so much as looking up to savor what they have. That’s life.

The first act of “Our Town” takes place in Grover’s Corners on May 7, 1901. Nothing much happens in the fictional New Hampshire village that day, except that two local teenagers, George Gibbs and Emily Webb, fall in love completely unaware that they do so under the shadow of the granitic pillars of time.