By David Gordon
The timeliness of Thornton Wilder’s 1942 Pulitzer Prize winner “The Skin of Our Teeth,” comes as a great shock. We are introduced to the every-family, the Antrobuses, a name derived from the Greek anthropos, meaning ‘human.’ There’s George (Ian Cramer), whose inventions of the alphabet, the wheel and the multiplication tables have changed the world, and his wife, Maggie (Whitney Stone), the nurturing homemaker who keeps a watchful eye on the children. The children are Henry (Matt Weaver), name changed from Cain after he murdered his brother and Gladys (Alyssa Litwin, one of the many attractive and scantily clad women in the cast), no biblical reference there.
From their home in Excelsior, N.J. (design by Rychard Curtiss), the Antrobuses soldier through the Ice Age, a great flood and a near apocalyptic war. The three-act play, directed with great comedic flair and poignancy by Jean Dobie Giebel, now playing at the Black Box Theater, takes us on a journey though the evolution of a human family: their compassion, their adaptability to change, their resistance to temptation, or lack thereof and, ultimately, their salvation. What you don’t realize is that what you’re watching happens to be a scary and realistic comedy.
The family maid, Sabina (Megan Lanzarone),-the name references the rape of the Sabine women-narrates this non-linear journey through time, in the same fashion as the omnipotent stage manager in Wilder’s “Our Town,” occasionally breaking character, and the mysterious fourth wall, to comment on how bad the play is or how she can’t say certain lines in front of certain audience members. Of course, she then gets yelled at by the “real” stage manager (Nikki Dillon).
Sabina is clearly the showy role and needs to be played by a charismatic comedienne. Lanzarone is all that and more. From the moment she steps on stage, she has the audience in the palm of her hand. Sexy, seductive and a master of physical comedy, “Skin” caps off Lanzarone’s distinguished career (which she gleefully runs down early in the first act) on Hofstra’s stages. Her presence, along with that of the seven others who are graduating in May, will be missed.
Cramer is an affable leading man and a great politician, one you just can’t help but root for, even when he can’t resist the temptation of a beautiful woman in a bathing suit.
Stone has the gestures and mannerisms of the 1950s TV mom down pat, thanks in part to a bright pink hausfrau dress, one of Cheryl McCarron’s pleasingly outlandish costumes. Stone and Litwin as mother and daughter have a great rapport.
Weaver has a particularly funny sight gag (which, if described, could not be printed in this publication) with Thor, the dinosaur dog (Paul Tiesler), in the first act and manages to elicit a great deal of sympathy in the third, when his character returns from war a tormented soldier.
Other memorable cameos include those by Elena Offerman, who, on screen (video and graphic design by Ryan Loya and Molly Wedgewood) and off, nails every aspect of a typical news anchor; Louis Aquiler, as a blind, electric guitar-strumming Homer; Amanda McIntyre, as the Gypsy fortune teller; and James Monahan as Moses, who impressively recites a great deal of Hebrew.
Giebel has directed a thoroughly entertaining production, which, most importantly, knows when to go for laughs and when to hold back.
The first two acts are wall to wall comedy (especially when a pool of refugees enter, dressed like the Monks from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”). Giebel has even creatively staged a scene of well, let’s just call it wet weather.
The third act is significantly more serious. Beginning with an impromptu understudy rehearsal, really slows down the momentum, but that’s Wilder’s writing, not a fault of the cast. And finally, we get to the meat of the story. Maggie and Gladys (now with child) have just spent seven years in a bomb shelter, waiting out the end of the war. George is leading an army with Henry as the leader of the opposite side. Questions arise of whether or not people can reconcile with one another, along with those of the essence of war and whether or not humans have done enough to warrant rebuilding civilization.
When “Skin” opened on Broadway in 1942, the country had been in World War II for slightly under a year. Currently, America has been in Iraq for just over five years. That history repeats itself and precisely Wilder’s point. In the era of “going green,” color warnings and 60-degree days in December and snowstorms in England in April, it is easy-and incredibly scary-to see how a sudden dramatic shift-perhaps to an Ice Age-could be thrust upon us.
(Rych Curtiss)