WORKS

Featured Work:
The Skin of Our Teeth

By Kara-Lynn Vaeni and Mark Blankenship, with added commentary by Lincoln Konkle.

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, with recent major productions at the Guthrie, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Trinity Repertory Theatre, and New York's Public Theatre. The Skin of Our Teeth was first published by Harper in 1942; it was reprinted in Three Plays with a preface by Wilder in 1957. 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."

The Skin of Our Teeth is the story of 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 dinosaurs do not), the Flood (as in the book of Genesis in the Bible) and War (as in WWII). Thus, as he did in The Long Christmas Dinner, Wilder compresses long expanses of time to establish his universal theme. 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.

While The Skin of Our Teeth repeats the life-cycle allegory (though on a cosmic scale) and presentational theatrical style of Our Town, it employs the farcical tone and type characters of The Matchmaker. The Antrobuses and Sabina are two-dimensional at best, and many of the large cast of minor characters do not even register as individuals (e.g., the refugees in Act One, the conveeners in Act Two). Like the slapstick antics and light banter of the couples in The Matchmaker, the stage business and dialogue in The Skin of Our Teeth is often downright silly, as when Antrobus—in a spoof of Darwinian evolution—addresses the six hundred thousandth annual convention of that "great fraternal order—the ancient and honorable order of mammals, subdivision humans," which has just elected Antrobus as its president : "I do not deny that a few months before my birth I hesitated between . . . uh . . . between pinfeathers and gill-breathing,—and so did many of us here,—but for the last million years I have been viviparous, hairy and diaphragmatic." Antrobus' species pride is thunderously applauded by the delegates to the convention.

However, at moments in this epic affirmation of human survival, the tone becomes solemn, as in Act Three after the Antrobuses have all returned home from the war; though he momentarily despaired at the thought of trying to start over again, Antrobus picks up a few of his books that have survived and says, "All I ask is the chance to build new worlds and God has always given us that. And has given us [opening the book] voices to guide us; and the memory of our mistakes to warn us. . . . We've come a long ways. We've learned. We're learning. And the steps of our journey are marked for us here." There was great cause for a pessimistic outlook at the time Wilder was writing: headlines were dominated by a second world war a mere twenty-five years after the first, and the hardships of the Great Depression were fresh in collective memory. But Thornton Wilder has Sabina close The Skin of Our Teeth with this optimistic farewell to the audience: "This is where you came in. We have to go on for ages and ages yet. You go home. The end of this play isn't written yet. Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus! Their heads are full of plans and they're as confident as the first day they began,—and they told me to tell you: good night."

©2003 Thornton Wilder Society