“The Skin of Our Teeth”—continuing through Sept. 29—is a weird play excellently executed by A Noise Within (ANW) with compelling acting and staging. Written by Thornton Wilder in 1942, the play bends the rules of theatre to tell the cyclical story of humanity through the Antrobus family. That it succeeds despite shattering the fourth wall multiple times is thanks to the strength of its three leads, resulting in a mind-bending theatrical experience that works surprisingly well today.
Tightly directed by ANW artistic directors Julia Rodriguez-Elliott and Geoff Elliott, “The Skin of Our Teeth” begins simply enough in the very normal-seeming Antrobus home in Excelsior, NJ, complete with armchairs, a piano and an all-important fireplace. For even though it’s August, there is snow and ice outside the window—oh, and also a dinosaur and woolly mammoth.
Sabina (a delightfully energetic Ann Noble) is dusting the room in a maid’s uniform while telling us about the Antrobus family—including how Mr. Antrobus invented the alphabet and the wheel, and how Mrs. Antrobus is extremely protective of her two children.
And then the play seems to stall as the next actor doesn’t enter on Sabina’s cue. She is told by the stage manager (Kasey Mahaffy) to keep talking, causing Noble to break character and tell us how she really doesn’t like this play and doesn’t even understand it and it’s the “same all the way through.”
But soon things are back on track, and we meet the matronly Mrs. Antrobus (Trisha Miller) and her children Henry (Christian Henley)—who has a “C”-shaped scar on his forehead and seems to like hitting people with stones— and the younger Gladys (Mildred Marie Langford). The two women and children seem frighteningly anxious about the impending return home of Mr. Antrobus, who’s sent a telegram about his arrival. Mrs. Antrobus takes the opportunity to ask the telegram reader if he has any fire because theirs has dangerously gone out.
The audience by now has the sense that this is not normal storytelling, or rather it’s telling a familiar story but in a topsy turvy way. The arrival of “master of the house” Mr. Antrobus (Frederick Stuart) also ushers into the living room the dinosaur and woolly mammoth, who seem to be domesticated, and a host of “refugees” who need shelter from the cold—a doctor, professor and muse among them. Outside, a glacial wall of ice approaches the house.
In Part II, the Atlantic City Boardwalk—featuring a savvy fortuneteller (Cassandra Marie Murphy) and beauty-contest winner (Noble)—is where the Antrobus family has come to participate in a convention of mammals and relax on the beach. Except it seems that rain is on the way, a lot of rain. And also the beauty-contest winner has designs on Mr. Antrobus.
Part III returns to the Antrobus home in Excelsior, only a great war has just ended and Sabina, dressed in uniform, searches for Mrs. Antrobus and Gladys, who emerge from the home’s cellar, Gladys carrying a baby. Henry, too, returns in uniform, but carrying a gun and feeling like he has no home. When a war-weary Mr. Antrobus also returns, hoping his treasured philosophy tomes have survived, Henry nearly strangles him.
As the three parts unfold, the fourth wall is broken a few more times, and we get biblical references, philosophers’ quotes and learn that Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus, who’ve been married for 5,000 years, managed to survive along with Sabina through ice ages, deluges and catastrophic wars.
We also get a lot of absurdist humor and interesting perspectives on gender (thanks in part to the two strong female leads). Where Mr. Antrobus has invented the alphabet and numbers, Mrs. Antrobus sews and invents the apron, but above all fights for the children to survive, ensuring humanity’s continuity. This division seems sexist—as does the relegation of Sabina to maid or husband-stealer—but as Mrs. Antrobus tells Mr. Antrobus in Atlantic City, a woman is not what he thinks, or what’s in the movies and magazines, but herself, something unfathomable at the heart of the universe.
In this way, though a few of the lines seem dated today, the play’s themes of climate change, refugees needing shelter, young men needing purpose to avoid descending into violence, and our propensity to become all too comfortable in times of peace, seem to speak to today.
And it makes sense that those references resonate as much now as in 1942, just as they perhaps might have a thousand years before and may yet in a thousand years in the future. The erudite Wilder—the only writer to have received Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction (“The Bridge of San Luis Rey”) and drama (“The Skin of Our Teeth” and “Our Town”)—seems to have boiled the human story down to its essence in this play before running it through a blender.
Furthering the audience’s immersion in this unusual story are set designs of both home and boardwalk by Frederica Nascimento; ice-age and wartime lighting by Ken Booth; glacial and other projections designed by Nicholas Santiago; and music and sound design by Robert Oriol and Rod Bagheri, plus apt costuming by Garry Lennon, with wigs and makeup by Tony Valdés.
Were it not for ANW’s strong direction, acting and staging, “The Skin of Our Teeth” would probably not cohere as a play through all of its contortions. As it is, this is a must-see production that may make you think differently about both theatre and humanity—and maybe even about yourself.
“The Skin of Our Teeth” continues at A Noise Within, 3352 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena, through Sept. 29, with performances Thursdays and Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 2:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m., and Sundays at 2:00 p.m. Tickets start at $52; student tickets at $20. For tickets and information, call (626) 356-3100 or visit anoisewithin.org. Run time is 2 hours and 20 minutes, including intermission.
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