Don't Mess With Thorton Wilder

I don't understand why the people who put on this production of Our Town felt they had to mess with Thorton Wilder's original dialogue. There is a point early on in the play where the stage manager (Paul Newman) is talking about the Grovers Corners paper boy who grew up, went to college to study engineering, graduated first in his class and then got killed in the First World War in France. The stage manager notes, as per Wilder's script, it was a "waste" of a good education and then goes on to make the following observation (not in Wilder's script): "What business we had picking a quarrel with the Germans we can't make out to this day. But it did seem clear at the time."

Not only is this totally gratuitous, and a desecration of a wonderful play, the new dialogue doesn't even make much sense. I presume the producers added this to further some personal ideological agenda (because it certainly wasn't needed on artistic grounds). But I can't even figure out what they were getting at--we shouldn't have fought Germany in the First World War? Okay, fine, if that's their point of view. But if so should have written a book about it or endowed a history chair at some university to teach that line of thought. What they shouldn't have done however was mess with Wilder's sacred text.