Katie Holmes took a bow for the audience during the opening night of the Broadway revivial of Our Town at The Barrymore Theatre in New York on Thursday.
The actress, 45, beamed from ear to ear as she joined her co-stars at curtain call for the new production of the Thornton Wilder play.
Narrated by a stage manager, the groundbreakingly meta play revolves around New Hampshire village life at the dawn of the 20th century.
Amid a Spartan stage set, characters break the fourth wall, travel backwards in time and even return from beyond the grave.
Katie portrays Mrs. Webb, who worries she is sending her daughter Emily into adulthood without having taught her enough about marriage and adult life.
Katie Holmes took a bow for the audience during the opening night of the Broadway revivial of Our Town at The Barrymore Theatre in New York on Thursday
The actress, 45, beamed from ear to ear as she joined her co-stars at curtain call for the new production of the Thornton Wilder play
Narrated by a stage manager, the groundbreakingly meta play revolves around New Hampshire village life at the dawn of the 20th century
She was joined on stage by Richard Thomas who plays her husband Mr. Webb while The Big Bang Theory star Jim Parsons plays The Stage Manager, the play’s narrator.
The show originally ran on Broadway in 1938 and became an instant classic of the American stage, winning the Pulitzer Prize For Drama.
Katie, who shares an 18-year-old daughter called Suri with her ex-husband Tom Cruise, is making her grand return to Broadway after 12 years.
The last time she acted on the Great White Way was in the 2012 comic play Dead Accounts, also starring Judy Greer and Wicked heartthrob Norbert Leo Butz.
Meanwhile, Our Town has enjoyed a string of revivals on Broadway since 1938, most recently in 2002 with a cast led by Paul Newman.
Katie rose to fame for her role as Joey Potter on Dawson’s Creek from 1998 to 2003.
Since then, she has appeared in films including Batman Begins (2005), Touched With Fire (2015), Dear Dictator (2018) and made her directorial debut with All We Had (2016).
Although Our Town is considered to be a classic of American playwriting, this production has received lukewarm reviews.
Amid a Spartan stage set, characters break the fourth wall, travel backwards in time and even return from beyond the grave
Katie portrays Mrs. Webb, who worries she is sending her daughter Emily into adulthood without having taught her enough about marriage and adult life
The show originally ran on Broadway in 1938 and became an instant classic of the American stage, winning the Pulitzer Prize For Drama
Katie turned heads upon her arrival at opening night of the long-awaited Broadway revival of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town at the Barrymore Theatre
The Dawson’s Creek alum’s brunette hair was slicked back off her face, allowing her to show off her silver earrings
Katie was joined by co-star Michelle Wilson, who looked radiant in a black frock
The New York Post rewarded the production only one-and-a-half-stars, saying the performances weren’t believable.
Reviewer Johnny Oleksinski wrote: ‘Despite the random contemporary touches, the actors get so mired in ‘gee willikers!’ nostalgia and drippy sentimentality Wilder’s script does not call for that playgoers cease to connect to anybody.
‘Scenes are, at once, overacted — like an olde tyme park — and underacted, with nary a believable or grounded moment to speak of.’
The Daily Beast was also largely unimpressed with the production, writing: ‘For Our Town to land, you have to believe in the embodiment of young love that George and Emily symbolize, and the beats of life their families and community undergo around them.
‘In this production, we are too aware of Parsons’ center-stage telling us everything and harrying the actors to stand here, and do that, to care that much about what they are doing. We spend too much time outside the action, outside them, and when they are in action, that action gallops by.’
The Wall Street Journal gave the revival an average review, saying the production is ‘polished’ and has ‘moments of humour’ but overfall felt it was ‘middling’.
Reviewer Charles Isherwood wrote: ‘This is the second middling Broadway production in a row (a 2002 version starred Paul Newman as the Stage Manager), and it left me with the reflection that perhaps an ‘Our Town’ for ‘our time’ would be better seen away from the Main Stem as it is currently constituted.’
Variety gave the play a more positive review, praising Katie Holmes’ and Jim Parsons’ performances as charming.
Reviewer Aramide Tinubu wrote: ‘Though ‘Our Town’ runs just 105 minutes, much shorter than the original two hours and 35 minutes, the last act does drag a bit. This final chapter centers on death and what we miss out on when we’re not truly present.
‘However, these scenes lean toward melodrama, removing some of the sharpness constructed in the play’s first two acts. Still, Leon masters the core of Wilder’s message. Life is fragile and fleeting, and love is all that matters.’
Slant took a different view of the performances however, writing: ‘Leon allows a little too much languidity that drifts toward blandness in some of the performances, especially Parsons’s genially indistinct Stage Manager and Katie Holmes’s under-nuanced Mrs. Webb.’