Tom Atkins revels in Stage Manager role in 'Our Town'

For actor Tom Atkins, playing the Stage Manager in “Our Town” is the fulfillment of a long-held ambition.

“I've always wanted to do this role,” Atkins says. “People are always asking me: ‘When will we see your King Lear? I haven't any interest in Lear. This is the role I wanted to do.”

Atkins will appear in the Pittsburgh Public Theater production of “Our Town,” which runs through Oct. 27 at the O'Reilly Theater, Downtown.

“Our Town” has become a beloved theater classic that has maintained its popularity with audiences since Thornton Wilder wrote it in 1938.

The simply staged, yet highly theatrical, drama follows the ordinary people of the small town of Grover's Corners as they go through their unremarkable daily lives and rituals — births, weddings and deaths — between the years of 1901 and 1913.

It is performed with only minimal scenery — some chairs, a pair of ladders. The cast of 24 mimes the tasks of reading books and preparing meals without relying on props.

As Stage Manager, Atkins serves as the play's somewhat detached narrator. He sets the scene for audience members, addressing them directly as he explains the layout of the town or fills in the back story of a character.

“I love that storytelling part, because there isn't anything to look at and the audience has to participate and imagine what everybody looks like and who everybody is,” Atkins says. “The words matter. They are all that matters in the play.”

“Our Town” is Atkins' 18th production at Pittsburgh Public Theater. He's most widely known for his record-breaking run as Steelers' owner Art Rooney in the debut and multiple re-mountings of “The Chief” with Pittsburgh Public Theater.

But the Peters resident's relationship with the Pittsburgh Public goes back to its first season when he appeared in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.”

Over the years, he also has played in two Public Theater productions of Eugene O'Neill's “A Moon for the Misbegotten.”

He's also made television appearances in shows that include “The Rockford Files” and “Oz,” as well as movies such as “Escape from New York,” “Lethal Weapon,” “Bob Roberts,” “My Bloody Valentine 3D” and the independent film “Apocalypse Kiss.”

Atkins says his itch to play the Stage Manager began when he saw Richard Dysart perform it in the mid-1970s at Will Geer's Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga Canyon, Calif. But it wasn't until after he began doing “The Chief” in 2003 that he suggested to Pittsburgh Public Theater producing artistic director Ted Pappas that he would like to play the role.

“Doing ‘The Chief' reinforced my desire to do it,” Atkins says. “It's like ‘The Chief,' where I talk to the audience the whole time. I'm mostly talking to the audience, being a kind of storyteller, a revealer of truth.”

Now that he's doing it, he's enjoying the experience.

“The role is great. It's a challenge to tell the audience little stories,” Atkins says. “The more I work on it, the more I like it.”

Many people have suggested that the Stage Manager is a wise and benevolent but distant God who observes and cares but doesn't intervene.

Atkins won't go that far, preferring to describe the Stage Manager as someone who's just telling a story.

“I love the philosophical stuff. It gives the Stage Manager a chance to say his feelings about life and death,” Atkins says. “He sees everything, knows everything and has been around a long time and will be around a long time. But he refers to himself as a living person.”

Alice T. Carter is the theater critic for Trib Total Media. She can be reached at 412-320-7808 or acarter@tribweb.com.