The Skin of Our Teeth

The Skin of Our Teeth is a 1942 play by Thornton Wilder that blends allegory, comedy, and existential drama to chronicle the trials of a single family across cataclysmic episodes resembling the Ice Age, the Noah's Ark flood, and a generalized World War II–era apocalypse. The work premiered on Broadway at the Shubert Theatre and quickly drew attention from figures associated with the Group Theatre, the Federal Theatre Project, and contemporaries such as Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee Williams. Wilder's experiment in metatheatre engaged architects of modern drama including Bertolt Brecht, Antonin Artaud, and proponents of Absurdism like Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco.

Plot

The play follows the Antrobus family—Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus and their children—through three episodic crises that mirror the Glaciation, a deluge evoking Genesis flood narratives, and a devastating war resembling World War I and World War II. Scenes shift abruptly with stagecraft reminiscent of Stanislavski-influenced realism colliding with the epic devices of Brechtian theatre, invoking a chorus-like narrator and direct audience address as in works by Ibsen and Sophocles. Incidents include a prolonged debate about rebuilding civilization with references to tools and inventions named after figures like George Washington and Thomas Edison, and comedic interludes featuring a stagehand figure who resembles personalities from Vaudeville, Harpo Marx, and the New York Drama Critics' Circle–era satirists. The episodic structure parallels narrative experiments found in James Joyce and structural juxtapositions used by Marcel Proust.

Characters

Principal figures include Mr. Antrobus, an archetypal patriarch who recalls inventors and statesmen such as Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln; Mrs. Antrobus, a resilient matriarch with echoes of Eleanor Roosevelt and classical heroines like Antigone; their son Henry; daughter Gladys; and maid Sabina, a liminal trickster figure whose comic timing invokes Molière and Noël Coward. Secondary figures and embodiments—such as the Professor, a bureaucrat echoing Max Weber-era technocrats and scientific minds echoing Albert Einstein—populate scenes that also feature allegorical personifications akin to characters from John Milton and Dante Alighieri. The play’s nonrealistic characters recall dramatis personae in the work of William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and the commedia dell'arte stock figures preserved by practitioners like Flaminio Scala.

Themes and motifs

Wilder interrogates human resilience, renewal, and the cyclical nature of catastrophe drawing on motifs from Biblical narratives, Greek tragedy, and Renaissance humanism represented by figures such as Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. Themes of memory, invention, and civilization are threaded with references to industrial pioneers like James Watt and cultural icons including William Wordsworth and Walt Whitman. The play’s meta-theatricality engages debates from critics and theorists such as Lionel Trilling, Harold Clurman, and Kenneth Burke about art’s civic role, and echoes philosophical concerns raised by Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger. Recurring motifs—reconstruction, the absurdity of bureaucracy, and domestic endurance—resonate alongside allusions to the Great Depression, the rise of Nazism, and the scientific revolutions ushered in by figures like Isaac Newton.

Production history and performances

Premiere production at the Shubert Theatre in 1942 was directed by Wilder and produced amidst wartime New York by collaborators connected to the American Theatre Wing and designers influenced by Norman Bel Geddes and Alexandre Benois. Early casts featured actors from the Group Theatre milieu and touring companies later staged the play in repertory circuits alongside works by George Bernard Shaw, Eugene O'Neill, and Arthur Schnitzler. International productions appeared in London at theatres associated with the Royal National Theatre and in continental venues influenced by directors of the Brecht Theatre Workshop and companies linked to Jean Vilar. Revivals have been mounted by institutions such as the Lincoln Center Theater, the Goodman Theatre, and university drama departments at Yale School of Drama and Juilliard School, with notable stagings directed by figures like Elia Kazan, Peter Brook, and contemporary interpreters following methodologies related to Jerzy Grotowski and Anne Bogart.

Critical reception and legacy

Initial critical response mixed praise from advocates like Brooks Atkinson and skepticism from critics aligned with Granville Hicks and the New York Times polemicists, inciting debates about realism vs. allegory among New Critics including Cleanth Brooks and John Crowe Ransom. The play influenced postwar dramatists across the English-speaking world and informed the development of Absurdist and postmodern theatre alongside practitioners such as Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, and Sam Shepard. Its thematic reach extended into adaptations and references in literature and film by creators like Orson Welles, Ingmar Bergman, and Charlie Chaplin admirers, and it remains studied in curricula at institutions like Harvard University, Columbia University, and the University of Oxford. Scholarly commentary from critics and historians including Harold Bloom, Richard Gilman, and Meyer Levin cemented its reputation as a provocative landmark bridging classical forms and modern sensibilities.

Category:Plays by Thornton Wilder