When Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1938, the self-awareness and breaking of the fourth wall that characterized the play were novel — if not controversial — introductions to the world of theater.

In contrast to the traditional American content of the story, the innovations that Wilder introduced, most notably the minimalist lack of scenery and the role of the Stage Manager (the narrator who interacts God-like with audience and cast alike), endowed "Our Town" with a certain timelessness borne of the marriage between past and future. Today, the sort of experimentation that Wilder pioneered is old-hat, if not entirely uninteresting. Audiences have come to expect the postmodern tricks of audience interaction and winking reference as if they were the norm.

In counting on being spoken to directly, it seems that audiences further expect to have tidy social messages imparted to them through their dramas, as if this were the central purpose of today's stage plays. The Madison Repertory Theatre's production of "Our Town" does nothing to conceal its intention to satisfy the aforementioned demand.

Its ideas are evident in the interpretations it grafts on to Wilder's story of life, marriage and death in a small American town at the turn of the 20th century. At first glance, the incorporation of a more cosmopolitan racial make-up to the historically conventional cast is a worthy promise to something different.

Wilder meant to provide an everyday microcosm of human experience through which universal messages could be revealed. Unfortunately, where this production could have been subversive, it remains too focused on its intentions and too casual towards the more important aspects of traditional, lucid drama.

Andre DeShields plays the Stage Manager with a disarming gusto. DeShields is a widely-acclaimed actor, having appeared in several shows on Broadway and recently honored as a Distinguished Alumnus by UW, and he does not want us to forget it. The role of the Stage Manager is one of the greatest inventions of modern theater, creating a character through which an actor can, in a sense, play God and invite the audience to join him in examining the daily lives of the inhabitants of the fictional Grover's Corner, N.H.

The Stage Manager introduces himself from the onset as the audience's guide, telling them what he is interested in, what they will be seeing and referring throughout, with a humble nod, to "our play." He is both omnipotent and invisible, and, in his best incarnations, a challenge to the audience to look at the futility of human existence — both "awful and wonderful" — in the face. As audience members watch the residents of Grover's Corner grow up, get married, have children and pass on, they are aware all along that this has been set up for their particular viewing.

This production is not content to let the quiet, creeping timelessness of Wilder's drama speak for itself, however, and the result is both confusing and frustrating. DeShields, clearly capable, does not seem to be trying at all, but instead seems to be toying with the power of the role he has been given. Other members of the cast, in turn, display a disconcerting self-awareness of their individual roles. This deprives the play of the seamlessness and eeriness that are central to its effect.

Several of the performances are strong, but only enough so to make the audience wish that the production had better made up its mind whether it was going to remain faithful to the original or give the play its own modern spin. As Emily Webb and George Gibbs, the young neighbors whose love and tragedy are the play's focus, both Carrie Coon and Joe Minoso display a willingness to embrace the simple sentimentality of the play that gives rise to its deeper underlying motivation.

In the final third act that sees Emily grappling with the reality of existence and mortality, Ms. Coon gives this production its only moments of greater resonance. At the end of the first act, the Stage Manager tells the audience, "You can go smoke now, if that's what you do." The audience may find itself measuring how long it ought to linger before it can heed the welcome entreaty.