Middletown Staged Feb. 10

The deceptively small universe of an anywhere American town comes into high relief in “Middletown,” a gentle, moving and funny new play by Will Eno, at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 10-14 at the University of Wyoming.

Directed by Landee Lockhart, “Middletown” will be at the Buchanan Center for the Performing Arts main stage. Tickets cost $14 for the public, $11 for senior citizens and $7 for students. For tickets and information, visit the Performing Arts or Wyoming Union box offices, call (307) 766-6666, or go online to www.uwyo.edu/finearts.

Eno is the author of the smash hit, “Thom Pain (based on nothing).”

Winner of the Horton Foote Prize for Promising American Play, “Middletown” is a wry and decidedly modern take on Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” The play captures the essence of provincial American life through snapshots of the people who populate Middletown’s quotidian houses and streets.

Newcomer Mary Swanson (Amber McNew) has just moved to Middletown, eager to start a family and to enjoy all the camaraderie small-town life has to offer. Lonely and disconnected, she befriends longtime resident John Dodge (Griffin Murphy), who is experiencing his own peculiar form of isolation. Soon, she discovers that life in Middletown is more complex than it first appears, as the everyday activities of the town’s inhabitants take on cosmic significance in a journey that takes them from the local library to outer space and points in between, but always stays right in the middle of things.

Called "a Samuel Beckett for the Jon Stewart generation" (The New York Times) and best known for his Pulitzer Prize-nominated one-person play, Eno is a celebrated American playwright whose other works include “Oh, the Humanity and other good intentions,” “The Flu Season,” “Tragedy: a tragedy” and “Intermission.”

“Will Eno is an original, a maverick wordsmith whose weird, wry dramas gurgle with the grim humor and pain of life,” said a review in The Guardian. The Chicago Tribune said “Middletown” is a “bit like Thornton Wilder's 'Our Town' if it had been penned by Dr. Seuss and edited by Samuel Beckett."