“Our Town” ’s Town

After lunch, the local actor-director Gus Kaikkonen led the group on a tour of downtown Peterborough that evoked “Our Town” ’s opening monologue (“Here’s the Town Hall and Post Office combined; jail’s in the basement”), minus the hollyhocks. “We used to have one stoplight here, and now there are two,” he said. Some details had a documentary quality: Emily and George’s school (“Still exists, on High Street”), the Gibbs and Webb houses (“Big old Victorian houses next door to each other. . . . Wilder didn’t say this one or that one, because he was being cagey about Peterborough”), their first-date drugstore (Wilder was a regular). Others were sui generis. “This used to be the Baptist Church,” Kaikkonen said. “Then it was a marionette opera theatre, run by a wonderful guy. It caught on fire, the whole place burned down, and he lost all of his marionettes, except maybe six that he managed to throw out a window.” (Only Escamillo, from “Carmen,” was saved.)