At: The Artistic Home, 3914 N. Clark
Tickets: 866-811-4111;
www.theartistichome.org; $25-$27
Runs through: March 21
The Skin of Our Teeth is part farce, part social satire and part epic; dramatic genres demanding completely different approaches to staging and interpretation. Additionally it's all-fantasy, a comic book retelling of the purported progress of Mankind from Ice Age to Biblical Flood to a world-threatening war. The play's also symbolic play with characters as human archetypes. It has 20 speaking roles, too, and can use all the extras a theater can muster. For all these reasons, Thornton Wilder's follow-up to Our Town is one of the least-produced Great American Plays. The last time I saw it professionally staged, nearly a decade ago, an accomplished director was buried by it.
Fortunately, director Jeff Christian is not buried by the play. He and the Artistic Home succeed admirably where many others have failed. First, Christian uses simple staging devices and the audience's imagination to create the play's shifting landscapes, climates and disasters so the need for special effects doesn't overwhelm the production. Next, Christian and cohorts strike just the right balance between farcical and satiric elements in acts I and II and the solemnity of Act III. Christian lets his actors be big where needed for comic effect, then pulls them back precisely on schedule. Finally, the production avoids any whiff of cynicism over Wilder's cautionary but optimistic elegy to the resilience and innate goodness of Mankind, based on the fundamental tenets of Judeo-Christian philosophy.
The story follows a typical suburban family who are the Every Family of human history. George and Maggie Antrobus have been married 5,000 years, always have two children and always manage to save the human race in crisis "by the skin of our teeth." In his office job, George is an inventor credited with the alphabet, the wheel and gun powder. The maid, Sabina ( Tallulah Bankhead in the original 1942 production ) , is the perpetual femme fatale and pleasure-seeker who provides much of the play's tension, as does the Antrobus' son, Henry, the bringer of violent self-aggrandizement to the world going back to the Biblical Cain.
Real-life husband and wife Kathy Scambiatterra and John Mossman are age-perfect and easily convincing as the introbuses. Scambiatterra invests Mrs. A. with the proper protective spirit while still deferring to Mr. A., played by Mossman with charming self-absorption. As Sabina, Maria Stephens easily avoids Bankhead cloning and plays comic moments with deft style. As the adolescent Antrobus kids, Katherine Swan and Nick Horst convey the promise, conflicts and terror of approaching adulthood which bear fruit in the last act. The capable supporting players,
most in multiple roles, are colorfully clothed in Aly Renee Greaves clever yet budget-conscious costumes. Kudo also go to the scenic, lighting and sound designers, whose less-is-more approach fits the playhouse and play.