BY KAUKAB JHUMRA SMITH
T HE S POT FOR
Review
Mammoth
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$5 LONG ISLANDS Lord Leebrick wrestles with Wilder's absurd epic.
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28 APRIL 8, 2004
T
“When we’re at war, we think of a better
he Skin of Our Teeth is the kind of
world,” explains Hof as Mr. Antrobus.
production one wishes one could
“When we’re at peace, we think of a more
study in print before watching on
comfortable one.”
stage. Challenging and full of incongruities,
In a wonderful performance, Hof plays the
Teeth is a play-within-a-play that’s too baf-
red-faced, volatile Mr. Antrobus with barely
fling to see only once, too long to see again,
concealed impatience. Ariel Pearlson as Mrs.
too dark to be funny and yet too meaning-
Antrobus suffers it all with brittle dignity.
ful to dismiss.
Things get weirder when a baby mam-
Fully aware of its own absurdity, Teeth
moth (Sarah Fischer) and a dinosaur (Elena
frequently stops itself while the “actors”
Stylos) frolic in front of their fireplace. The
debate the script. “I don’t understand a
amateurish animal costumes and some
word of this play,” frets the beautiful Miss
coarsely lettered wooden sets provide the
Somerset (Victoria Blake), an irked actress
main quibbles with an otherwise skilled
playing the maid Sabina. “Why can’t we
production.
have plays like we used to have?”
The Antrobus children nicely juxtapose
In a fabulously flamboyant yet sympa-
the dual potential of human nature in the
thetic performance, Blake’s character
face of adversity. Teresa Koberstein glows
peremptorily calls for time-outs, stopping
with innocence and vulnerability as daugh-
the action onstage while struggling to
ter Gladys, growing into a young protective
understand and then explain the play to the
mother. Johnny Ormsbee as son Henry —
audience. It’s a complicated set-up held
together by strong chemistry
between Blake and Ken Hof,
The Skin of Our Teeth, Lord Leebrick, through April 17.
and supported by solid per-
formances from most of the
cast. This meta-theatre is what
gives Teeth its comic bite, but
its overarching theme is of
human destruction and renewal.
Director Craig Willis pres-
ents the Antrobuses as a “typi-
cal” American family with two
kids and a house in the sub-
urbs. The Antrobuses survive
thousands of years through the
Ice Age, a biblical Great
Flood, and a shattering world
war. Each time they face
extinction only to circle back,
armed with the same skills as before, to
formerly known as Cain — matures dra-
matically from a slingshot-happy boy to a
make a new try at living.
Thornton Wilder wrote the Pulitzer-
bitter killer in army fatigues.
“Every good and excellent thing in the
prize winning Teeth during World War II, a
time when everything depended on peo-
world stands on a razor’s edge of danger
and must be fought for,” says Mr. Antrobus.
ple’s ability to start over. The worry that the
lessons of wartime would dissolve in the
The Skin of Our Teeth plays at Lord
Leebrick through April 17.
frivolity of peacetime underscores the play.
ew