The Thornton Wilder Society Newsletter

The Skin of Our Teeth, a Play for the New Millenium

By Kara-Lynn Vaeni and Mark Blankenship

When writing The Skin of Our Teeth, Thornton Wilder called it "the most ambitious project I have ever approached." This may be true, since the play strives to represent the ongoing struggles of humanity, but it can still be placed within the rest of his canon. For example, much like the seminal Our Town (as well as most of his shorter plays), The Skin of Our Teeth is decidedly non-naturalistic—characters address the audience, backstage crew enter and speak, and the set is minimal or symbolic. In this play, however, Wilder enhances his technique by introducing the fictional actors who play his characters. Therefore, while he repeats the Pullman Car Hiawatha conceit of having the hours personified as philosophers, he also depicts them as being played by the theater's maintenance staff. Housemaid Sabina may pause to address the audience like Our Town's stage manager, but she also speaks to us as Miss Fairweather, the actress playing Sabina. This extra level of theatricality grounds Wilder's archetypal figures in human detail, reminding us that the play's ideas implicate everyone.

The Skin of Our Teeth is the story of the Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus, their children Henry and Gladys, and their maid Sabina. They are simultaneously a typical American family living in a present-day New Jersey suburb and are also Adam, Eve, Lilith, Cain and a daughter who survive the Ice Age (although their pet baby dinosaurs do not), the Flood and War.

Mr. Antrobus invented the wheel and the brewing of beer and no matter what happens, is intent on saving the works of Shakespeare. Mrs. Antrobus invented the hem, the apron and "frying in oil", and would burn all the works of Shakespeare to keep her children from catching a cold. Henry/Cain is trying to memorize the multiplication tables and learn how to use his slingshot, Gladys loves her Daddy and can't keep her dress down, and Sabina just wants to get out of the kitchen and go to the movies. And all the while, the actors crack jokes to the audience, refuse to perform scenes they don't like and argue with the Stage Manager (of course we have a Stage Manager!) while the set falls down around their ears.

The Skin of Our Teeth made its world premiere at New Haven's Shubert Theatre on October 15, 1942, where it received a notoriously mixed reaction from audiences (legend tells of patrons racing from the theater at the first intermission). The play received a warmer reception at its New York premiere on November 18, and in 1943 it won Wilder his third Pulitzer Prize. The play has been continually produced since, receiving recent major productions by the Guthrie, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Trinity Repertory Theatre, and New York's Public Theatre. Critical and audience responses to the play have always been divided (perhaps the sign of a truly great work), but the play's constant presence on the stage suggests James Woolcott was correct when he stated "having seen The Skin of Our Teeth and thought about it and read it, I know what I think about it. I think no other American play has ever come anywhere near it."

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