Review: Surviving the Triple Apocalypse: Funny, Faithful THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH at Park Square Theatre

By: Feb. 12, 2019
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Review: Surviving the Triple Apocalypse:  Funny, Faithful THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH at Park Square Theatre

Opening disclosure: I love this script! I think it's one of American theater's great treasures. It's remarkably timely despite being written in the 1940s. Penned by Thornton Wilder after OUR TOWN, it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1943. It's hugely inventive, theatrically bold rather than narrowly realistic, meta before meta was a thing, about truly big issues (e.g., the survival of the human race) and wickedly funny to boot. It should be noted that not everyone agrees, and there were some folks in the opening night audience in Saint Paul who left in the second intermission.

Yes, it's long, as most plays of the 1940s were. There have to be two intermissions because, in this three act play, major set changes are required. Act 1 is set in a modest New Jersey suburban house, though there's an ice age looming. Act 2 takes place on the Atlantic City boardwalk at the Six Hundred Thousandth Annual Convention of the Ancient and Honorable Order of Mammals (Sub-division -- Humans), as a flood of biblical proportions threatens. Act 3 is back in the house, now destroyed as a result of an apocalyptic war, just ended.

Throughout, we follow the fortunes of the Antrobus family: Dad, Mom, son Henry, daughter Gladys, and maid Sabina. They contend with each other, natural and manmade disaster, and their own mercurial temperaments. But this is no small domestic canvas--all of human history comes in to play before we're done.

It's a big undertaking to mount a production of SKIN OF OUR TEETH, requiring a sizable cast as well as considerable technical resources. That's why it's rarely professionally produced, though you can see it staged at colleges and ambitious high school theater programs. Thankfully, the Twin Cities have a company specializing in "larger scale American plays of exceptional literary merit." Kudos go to Girl Friday Productions, which mounts a show every other year, and to Park Square Theatre, which handed over their proscenium stage to this effort.

It should be noted that they had their own ice age and flood to contend with in the process. The recent polar vortex in MInnesota led to burst pipes in the old Hamm Building where the theater is located, and dressing rooms and other vital spaces were heavily damaged. Nevertheless both this show (as well as an all-female ANTIGONE in the smaller basement space) are going up as scheduled. Anybody who wants to help the theater with a donation should go to the theater's website.

Director and scenic designer Joel Sass calls this play a "screwball tragedy" in his director's note, and he's right. He's contrived three different looks for the 3 locations: "Bless This House" picket fence domestic for Act 1; tacky and cartoonish for Act 2; darkly contemporary for Act 3. He's aided in this by video designer Kathy Maxwell and costumer Kathy Kohl, who've crafted smart supports to these choices in their respective realms.

This play is rich in great roles. Equity actor John Middleton plays Mr. Antrobus, and nails both the visionary, kooky generosity of the part and the sudden fits of anger and depression to which this archetypal pater familias (also referred to as Adam and Noah in the text) is prone. Girl Friday Production's Artistic Director Kirby Bennett plays Mrs. Antrobus, bringing forth both her annoying nagging and her long-suffering endurance. Alayne Hopkins, the second Equity performer in the cast, plays the critical role of Sabina: maid, seductress, guerilla fighter, and rogue actress. Wilder's brilliant text repeatedly requires her to break character and address the audience directly, bringing the story action to a halt while advising us "not to take this play seriously" and informing us that she believes "the theater is not a place where people's feelings should be hurt." I found her least convincing in Act 2, the act where the dual female archetypes of mother/wife and whore are explicitly addressed by Wilder.

The two kids have great arcs to play. Gladys (Kathryn Fumie) and Henry (Neal Skoy) start as boisterous, whiny brats. They add a lot of life to Act 2 with hilarious, extended bits eating salt water taffy. And Henry's dangerous, glowering, miserable manchild in Act 3 is a treatise on toxic masculinity. Any student of triangles in family systems has plenty to chew on in this production.

There are plenty of other memorable bits, including of course the dinosaur (Pedro Juan Fonseca) and the wooly mammoth (Victoria Pyan) -- yes, that's right -- roles that can steal Act 1. Director Sass, who is a reliable pillar of creative excellence around town in multiple theater companies, working as director or designer or both, has calibrated their performances so that they are a ton of fun but don't interfere with the essential exposition.

I think this script is a 'must see' if you want to understand American theater history. It's also uncannily timely in our age of climate change and the roll back of nuclear treaties. This production certainly does it justice. You'll get to laugh in the face of threats to species survival, which is bracing, like the cold in Act 1 or in Minnesota right now. Could the text use some trimmming? Yes--the Fortuneteller in Act 2 just goes on too long, for instance. But I urge you not to miss THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH at Park Square, which runs through March 3.

Photo credit: Petronella J. Ytsma



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