The Skin of Our Teeth

This page features reviews of Maureen's performance as Mrs Antrobus in David Lans' production of Thornton Wilders 1940's play, The Skin of Our Teeth, which played at The Young Vic Theatre, London SE1 from February to April 2004 This avant-garde play by Thorton Wilder won the Pulitzer Prize in 1942 for its depiction of the Antrobuses, an all American family, and more generally, how humankind has survived throughout the various ages (and catastrophes) of the world. At the start, we see Mr and Mrs Antrobus, played by the wonderfully magisterial David Troughton and the frantic Maureen Beattie, at their home in New Jersey in 1942. All seems well, although the weather is chilly in midsummer. One begins to smell a rat as their pet dinosaur and mammoth invade the living room in search of heat. The play is acted out in almost complete theatre in the round, with a stage made of three different platforms that can collapse on cue. The play takes place over three acts (as well as over three hours) with a cast of actors who switch in and out of character quick enough to keep the audience on its toes. In fact, the play, although executed well, was somewhat long and tedious to sit through. By the final act, the switching from character to actor became quite frustrating. Something must be said for the cast however. Maureen Beattie who plays Mrs Antrobus, is nothing short of stoic as she convinces the audience that she is the glue that has held the family together thus far. David Troughton' who plays Mr Antrobus, has enormous stage presence and seems almost larger than life in his depiction of the father of all fathers. The Skin of Our Teeth is a must see for avant-garde fans, but you might avoid it if youre easily annoyed by a long, not quite so professional night at the theatre. The Guardian Lan and his brilliant designer, Richard Hudson, seize on this last quality. Hudson has created a solid-seeming traverse stage that sensationally collapses as the evening progresses. In the midst of the mayhem there is Indira Varma's wonderfully witty, skittering Sabina, who combines intoxicating allure with mounting desperation: "It's press night, for fuck's sake" she cries as flats keel over and lighting cues get lost. David Troughton likewise hilariously switches between the angst of the Everyman-hero and the agony of an actor caught up in a chaotic charade. Meanwhile, Maureen Beattie's Mrs Antrobus stoically soldiers on, even calming down her distraught fellow actors. The Independant The droll dramatic conceit of The Skin of Our Teeth is to present the history of mankind through the never-ending lives of a stereotypical suburban family from New Jersey. It feels like a weird mix of Frank Capra and Pirandello, as we watch the Antrobuses - burly, ebullient, but underlyingly anxious (especially the excellent Troughton), having just perfected the alphabet and pioneered the wheel - endure seriocomic cataclysms like the Ice Age and an apocalyptic war, before eventually coming round full circle (with the 5,000th wedding anniversary of the parents well in the past) to more or less where they began. It offers a tough, strenuously hopeful vision of a human race that, though repeatedly on the brink of physical and moral annihilation, always manages to pull itself together through love of kith and kin (even when they happen to be evil) and through the stoical staunchness of wives, represented here by Maureen Beattie's likeable Maggie, a woman who declares that families remain together more because of a binding contractual promise than because of love. In the preface to the piece, Wilder writes about how moving the play seemed when it was performed in a shattered post-war Germany. The Stage For this first ever London revival, David Lan, lacking a star of equal magnitude, turns the flame of invention even higher, giving substance to Wilder's theatrical teases and asides, including alarming 'earth-plate' shifts of scenery (design by Richard Hudson), a stage fight that becomes the real thing and a step too far having the lead actor declare that due to an off-stage 'accident' the performance is cancelled and offering refunds, made with such apologetic seriousness that one senior critic got up to go. If the production itself now becomes the star, there are also some outstanding performances, notably David Troughton's larger than life Mr Antrobus rounding every dangerous corner with ebullient optimism, Maureen Beattie as his doughty wife, and Bette Bourne doubling as Homer and a Mystic Meg depicting the Flood.