Seattle Rep has done it again in its loving revival of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth, a show that I’ve known forever (or at least since I was seventeen and taking drama classes back in the halcyon days of my youth) but haven’t ever seen.
It was more of a romp than I remember reading. The show opens during the Ice Age, with the Antrobus family, a locational name from Chesire in England but also echoing the Greek word anthropus (“man”) who is dealing with the coming of the ice from north to south; it is colder than it has ever been before, snow and ice even in the August of the first act’s setting. The first act ends with a history pageant that references the Bible, Plato, Homer and three women who turn out to be the Muses (Sunam Ellis, also playing the stage manager; Laura Crottel, also the fortune-teller; and Ally Poole, later the convention singer) with commentary from Sabina (Sara Hennessy) who keeps stopping the show, to the utter frustration of the stage manager.
The second act, set during the Flood, brings that same family to the Boardwalk of New Jersey, millennia later and/or just now. Sabina is present but in disguise as a fan dancer who is trying to seduce George Antrobus (Carlos Lacámara) into marriage, as she has been trying to do since the opening of the play. Meanwhile, Henry (Chip Sherman, aka Cain, yes, that Cain) continues to become more and more twisted as the show goes on in spite of the warnings of his sister, Gladys (Rachel Guyer-Mafune). The fortune-teller (Laura Crotte) tries to warn everyone of what’s happening, that Henry’s rise to power will end in war, but as she notes, she is Cassandra, the one who can’t be listened to, and is frustrated by knowing what will happen but not believed.
The third act doesn’t really seem to have a time—it is today, the day just after war has ended again. Henry has risen high and is a Hitler-like figure (though in this production dressed more like a Cesar Chavez), who has been overthrown and comforted by his mother, Mrs. Antrobus (Emily Kuroda). Then follows a mystical production (done, of course, with lights) that highlights the human race’s greatest minds and then… well, then, Sabina stops the show and tells us that we, as audience, can go home, but that they, the cast, can’t and starts the show over again as we walk out.
The show moves beautifully through various times: it takes place in the eternal Now of God as well as in Atlantic City and New Jersey and is as much in the Ice Age as it is today. This is a beautiful production, with design by Stephanie Kerley Schwartz (set), Angela Balogh Calin (costumes), Robert J. Aguilar (lighting) and M L Dogg (sound) as directed by Dámaso Rodríguez. Projections, music and movement (Megan Wilkerson, Orlando G Morales and Charlie Johnson, Chip Sherman and Vivana Garza) all help move the show along.
Don’t miss this show: it’s thoughtful and well worth the time to go to the Bagley Wright Theater. One of the most interesting of the theatrical experiments of the mid 20th century to grace the American stage, it also is hugely entertaining. No wonder it helped win the Pulitzer Prize for Mr. Wilder, its author; this production makes you see why that had to happen.