Review: "The Skin Of Our Teeth", Curtain Players

Editor’s Note:  I attend about 70 live Central Ohio Theater shows per year, including high school, community theater, college and professional productions.

    I try to write something about everything that I see.  I don’t publish all my reviews.  In some cases, it’s because my overall perceptions are negative, and you know the old aphorism: “If you can’t say something nice…”

    Sometimes I get so busy that I don’t have time to write a timely, comprehensive review. 

     It seems sacrilegious to attempt explanations or embellishments for the great words and wisdom of a master such as Thornton Wilder.  Yet, I feel compelled to describe my involvement with this play.

     Writing about “The Skin Of Our Teeth” has been very difficult because of the uniqueness of the experience and because of the intensity of emotions and thoughts that it stirred up in me.   I have struggled to capture what this show meant to me.

     This review is an anomaly and an exception to most of my review-writing rules. This is a very “personal” review, because it was a very “personal” experience.

   For that reason, it seems right and proper that this should be my final review for 2016.     

“…Just like the hours and stars go by over our heads at night, in the same way the ideas and thoughts of the great men are in the air around us all the time and they’re working on us, even when we don’t know it…”

    Thornton Wilder gives us these and many other wonderful words in his Pulitzer Prize winning classic  “The Skin Of Our Teeth”.   

    My friends, Director Danielle Filas and Assistant Director Krista Threadgill put these and a few more of Wilder’s choice words into my mouth and persuaded me to stand in the middle of the stage and say the words, out loud, in front of audiences – not once, not twice, -- but three times, plus a couple rehearsals.

     Though I am passionate about theater, for many years I have sworn multiple oaths against my being on stage.  Yet there I was.  A friend who witnessed my performance reminded me, “Never say never. The experience shook me to my core.  That is why it has taken so long for me to write this review of Curtain Players May 2016 production of “The Skin Of Our Teeth.” 

     Like most people, my first knowledge of  Thornton Wilder came with his Pulitzer prize-winning  “Our Town” which was performed by my high school drama club when I was a sophomore. That was also my first solid connection to understanding and appreciating live theater. 

      My 11th-grade literature teacher led an extensive study of Wilder’s 1955 script “The Matchmaker” which became the vehicle for the beloved “Hello Dolly”.  Though “Hello Dolly” maintains much of the wit and wisdom from the “Matchmaker” it leaves out some of my favorite quotes, including the great Malachi Stack monolog where he tells the audience that they should learn to nurture one good vice in their bosom and let virtue spring up modestly around it.    

   “The Skin Of Our Teeth” is less well known and not as widely performed.  It is quirky and somewhat esoteric in its attempt to capture the allegorical truths of the history of humanity and the Everyman experiences of the four-person Antrobus family with their maid Sabina as they survive the ice age, famine, The Great Flood, and war, to carry on as humans must do through all the cycles and seasons of humanity’s struggles and triumphs; joys and sorrows.

     Scholars and critics describe the piece as a tragi-comedy with much of the comedy bordering on farce. 

    For me, the funniest moments come through the antics and side bits from Sabina (Kasey Meininger) who constantly breaks the fourth wall.  She tells the audience that she hates this play and is sorry she got dragged into it.  She claims to dislike the Antrobus family, but she keeps going along wherever their adventures take them. 

    As The Great Flood approaches, Sabina and the entire Antrobus family find themselves at a significant crossroads, marked by flashing lights that portend dire circumstances for all.

    Fortunately George Antrobus (Casey Merkey) comes to his senses and saves the mammals, including humans.  Sabina begs to be rescued as well, and Mrs. Maggie Antrobus (Molly Watson) decides to forgive and include Sabina in the rescue despite Sabina’s repeated treachery and betrayal.  Sabina becomes a loving and respectful member of the family, helping keep the home fires burning in the face of war.   

     The acting among principles Watson, Merkey, and Meininger was uniformly excellent with fine characterizations, believable relationships, attractive gestures, and effective ensemble work.

   Isaac Barnes brought much credibility to the role of Henry Antrobus, who is a reincarnation -- or perhaps a loving mother’s re-configuration of the Biblical Cain, best known for murdering his brother Able.  Despite his youth, Barnes achieved a level of sophistication worthy of the mash-up of the confusing humanness of innocent boy turned anti-hero who is constantly at war with everybody, including himself. 

   Jessica Weislogel completed the family circle as the naive, movie star loving good girl, who comes of age in the face of the flood and settles into maturity during war. 

   Supporting players Heather Schultz (Dinosaur/Fortune Teller), Brian Henry (Broadcaster/Doctor/News Reporter), Lizzy Merkey (Mammoth/Girl), Martina Holbrook (Telegraph Boy/Girl 2), Heather Fidler (Muses) Frank Peter (Moses/Covener) and JJ Sheehan (Homer/Covener/Broadcast Assistant) all distinguished themselves and found moments to stand out with the help of Filas’s excellent direction and Wilder’s brilliant prose.  I was especially impressed with Schultz’s comic timing, subtlety and physical expression in delivering the attitude of the fortune teller.

    Pivoting periaktoi’s from Set Designer Craig Choma and Set Construction/Painting Chief Neil Aring provided clever, space-efficient, colorful scenic background to suggest various settings, including the Antrobus living room, a carnival and seaside cabanas.

    Lighting design from Denise Dumouchelle featured a functional weather warning signal, much like a traffic light.  

    Holly Wetmore Kemeter’s design of the puppets that Fidler manipulated, provided a special added dimension and helped create three characters in one person.

     Wilder completed this script a month after the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor which led to the U.S.’s entry into WW II. 

      According to the Harper Collins study guide, Wilder’s addition of farcical elements was intended to help audiences accept, contemplate and understand many of the most horrific aspects of the human condition.  Wilder told people that the idea for including comedy came from a vaudeville bit where a rubber chicken flew off the stage and landed in Wilder’s lap. 

   This script includes references that can be adapted for local color and current events.  Typically I am not a fan of these kinds of script revisions and additions because they often descend to petty, tasteless, partisan political and social statements or allusions to sports that detract from effective theater storytelling.  Many audience members, --myself included -- go to the theater to escape sports. 

    Filas and her team wisely chose to use the updated, localized bits to incorporate lore that referred to Curtain Players history and personalities.

    My favorite such moment came when Sabina broke character in the midst of her seduction of George to argue with Stage Manager Kent Halloran over what the author wrote about the situation, because such words might “hurt the feelings” of some audience members.  (The stage manager is the primary foil for Sabina’s tirades when she breaks the fourth wall.)

   “I won’t say those lines, and I don’t care what Betty Peters thinks,” she told the stage manager.

    This was a reference to my being a stickler for exact wording on the many occasions when it has been my privilege to serve as rehearsal assistant for Curtain Players’ productions. The things said by actors who haven’t correctly memorized the lines, might convey the general ideas, but these paraphrases usually don’t match the splendor and facility of expression that playwrights have provided. 

     I had registered repeated reminders with Meininger about wording of her monologs when she played the role of Maggie in “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.”  Thus it seemed appropriate that she would convey this ultimate coup de gras.  (By the way, Meininger was brilliant in “Cat” as well as “The Skin Of Our Teeth”. )

     At my first dress rehearsal for “Skin” Meininger delivered the line directly at me.  It was …I don’t care what that damned Betty Peters thinks.  I instantly burst into loud, hysterical laughter and kept laughing as Meininger continued the scene.  

   Some might have construed this line as vicious, mean-spirited sarcasm.  I saw it as an expression of understanding, acceptance and affection.   If they disliked me, why would they have encouraged me to become an honorary member of the cast? 

     I have found that most aspects of life are more understandable and endurable when I can laugh at myself and with my fellow human beings. I think that is part of what Wilder wanted people to recognize in this play.  I realized that I was among family and friends here in my Curtain Players Theater home.

   Meininger removed the “damned” during regular performances, out of respect for audience members who might not have known who I was or appreciated the extra colorful language.  I still laughed every time I heard it.

     My appearance on stage came toward the end of the play when members of the cast allegedly became ill and could not go on because they had consumed some questionable food from the Green Room refrigerator.  Stage Manager Halloran was forced to substitute people from the house staff into the roles of the hours.   We didn’t have to memorize the lines.  We were permitted to read them from the back of the placards we carried.  I tried to memorize my lines, because – well – it just seemed like the right thing for me to do, especially in view of the fact that I have been (and continue to be) that person who insists that actors have to memorize their lines accurately. 

      Having endured cold, hunger, flood, war and many of the other indignities that constantly plague humanity, George and Maggie Antrobus sit together in peaceful loving embrace.  George reflects upon his insights from the many great books that he treasured.  He tells Maggie that often, in the midst of war, he would stand on a hill and think about the wisdom of the scholars.  He named the hours after many of the great philosophers. 

     The lights dimmed on a beautiful stage picture of Maggie and George together and a bright light appeared at center stage as the four philosophers, representing the late night hours, poured out our wisdom.

   I was eleven o’clock.  I was shaking as I stepped forward to deliver my line:  “This good estate of the mind possessing its object in energy we call divine. This we mortals have occasionally and it is this energy which is pleasantest and best. But God has it always. “It is wonderful in us; but in Him how much more wonderful.”  

    I was shaking, but at the same time I was proud to be a part of this beautiful moment and pleased to be able to deliver some of Thornton Wilder’s wisdom.