The Skin of Our Teeth (Broadway Theatre Archive)
by Jack O'Brien
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Actor: Blair Brown, Bonnie Campbell-Britton, Diana Bellamy, Jeffrey Combs, Renee BrooksDirector: Jack O'Brien
Brand: Kultur
Producer: Bill Chase
Producer: Jac Venza
Producer: Samuel Paul
Producer: Thomas Hall
Writer: Thornton Wilder
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 113 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-07-30
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Kultur Video
DVD Reviews of The Skin of Our Teeth (Broadway Theatre Archive)
DVD Review: It's The End Of The World As We Know It--Again and Again and Again
Summary: 4 Stars
Today Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) is likely best known as the author of OUR TOWN, a play so remarkably powerful and popular that statisticians declare it is performed some where in the world at least once a day. But Wilder wrote quite a bit more than OUR TOWN and indeed won two other Pulitizers: one for the novel THE BRIDGE OVER SAN LUIS REY and one for the play THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH.
Written during the early 1940s, the THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH opened in New York in 1942--a point during World War II in which Japan so dominated the Pacific and Germany so dominated Europe that it seemed possible Allied forces might not win the day. Then as now, it was a very strange play: highly theatrical, highly mannered, and it broke new theatrical ground for American audiences in more ways than one could count. Most critics liked the play a great deal; so too did most audiences. But the ones who did not like the play were very emphatic about it, and to this day it is part of Broadway folklore that a taxi driver in need of a fare had only to drive to the Plymoth Theatre, where he could easily pick up somebody storming out early on the show.
The play is not easily described. Characters speak directly to the audience; actors break character and argue among themselves; and although in some respects they seem to be living in modern America in other respects they seem unstuck in time, shifting from one historical epoch to another. In Act One the characters face encroaching glaciers of the ice age. In Act Two they are confronted with a flood of truly Biblical proportions. Act Three finds them digging out from the aftermath of a great war. In each instance they have escaped extinction "by the skin our teeth"--and so the play is not so much about the disasters mankind has faced but about mankind's strength, durability, spirit, and hope.
The 1970s and 1980s saw a major upswing of interest in Wilder's works, and this 1983 production of TEETH was at the crest of the wave. Over the years the play has attracted such talents as Tallulah Bankhead, Frederick March, Mary Martin, Montgomery Clift, and Helen Hayes; the cast of this production, which was broadcast live, is no less fine and includes Blair Brown, Harold Gould, and Sada Thompson. And it is a rarity, for it actually manages to capture the feel of a live stage performance. The players are memorable, Wilde's lines are given maximum reign, and everything unfolds with a sweep and pagentry that is both grandiose and niave. Even so, the play is flawed in two significant ways.
Rue McClanahan is truly a gifted actress, but the role of The Fortune Teller in Act Two is hardly her shining hour. She plays as a cross between Mae West, a classic New Jersey girl, and a casino floozie. The role is pivitol to both Act Two and the overall play, and while McClanahan performs full force and with tremendous energy she actually has the effect of derailing the significance of the role and creating a speed bump in the play's path. Even more unfortunate, however, is the extraordinarily dark way in which Act Three has been interpreted. Granted, Wilder's script is indeed a dark comedy with act three the darkest point, but director Jack O'Brien has pushed the darkness to such an extent that it is not so much comic as profoundly depressing--and it effectively destroys the ultimate point of Wilder's script. It is an instance in which the director has imposed a meaning upon the play that does not exist in the play itself.
Even so, given the performers, the designs, and the script itself, this is one show that fans of Wilder in general and the play in particular cannot afford to miss. Recommended with the noted reservations.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
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