The Skin Of Our Teeth Critical Analysis
If art is meant to have layers, Arin Arbus’s revival of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth is a mille-crepe with a side of fried chicken.
Theatre for a New Audience transforms the stage of the Polonsky Shakespeare Centre in Brooklyn to bring a wildly entertaining revival of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth. Written by Wilder in 1942 The Skin of Our Teeth is an aggressively abstract look at mankind’s resilience and the chaotic nature of life. Director Arin Arbus takes the audience on a headache-inducing journey through three distinct acts. In ice age, hurricane and war characters are torn apart and brought back together throughout this two and a half hour spectacle.
The stage opens to a hilarious monologue by Sabina, the play’s narrator, as she describes the characters and the impending doom that they will soon face - the entire North East is threatened by a giant wall of ice moving south from Canada. From the first scene to the last, the play is led by Mary Wiseman’s remarkable embodiment of Sabina. Hysterical and …show more content…
Throughout these tragedies the Antrobus family remain unfalteringly loving to one another and show us the power of family. It also demonstrates the circular nature of mankind - always leaning towards chaos and conflict. The fact that Arin Arbus’s revival of this 1942 play continues to resonate with a modern audience is an ode to this. Wilder wrote The Skin of Our Teeth at a time of chaos in the world - in anticipation of World War II. The audience sitting in the Polonsky Shakespeare Centre seventy-five years later, were drawing connections from the play to current conflicts in our political landscape. The play presents issues about refugees and questionable political leaders that make it hard to believe that the script was not written with our present day audience in
Theatre for a New Audience transforms the stage of the Polonsky Shakespeare Centre in Brooklyn to bring a wildly entertaining revival of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth. Written by Wilder in 1942 The Skin of Our Teeth is an aggressively abstract look at mankind’s resilience and the chaotic nature of life. Director Arin Arbus takes the audience on a headache-inducing journey through three distinct acts. In ice age, hurricane and war characters are torn apart and brought back together throughout this two and a half hour spectacle.
The stage opens to a hilarious monologue by Sabina, the play’s narrator, as she describes the characters and the impending doom that they will soon face - the entire North East is threatened by a giant wall of ice moving south from Canada. From the first scene to the last, the play is led by Mary Wiseman’s remarkable embodiment of Sabina. Hysterical and …show more content…
Throughout these tragedies the Antrobus family remain unfalteringly loving to one another and show us the power of family. It also demonstrates the circular nature of mankind - always leaning towards chaos and conflict. The fact that Arin Arbus’s revival of this 1942 play continues to resonate with a modern audience is an ode to this. Wilder wrote The Skin of Our Teeth at a time of chaos in the world - in anticipation of World War II. The audience sitting in the Polonsky Shakespeare Centre seventy-five years later, were drawing connections from the play to current conflicts in our political landscape. The play presents issues about refugees and questionable political leaders that make it hard to believe that the script was not written with our present day audience in