#George and Maggie Antrobus

[suetravelblog]

Thornton Wilder - The Skin of Our Teeth at Very Little Theatre

A mellow summer continues to provide peaceful space for pondering past and future travel adventures. With the havoc and devastation of deadly wildfires, floods, and wars currently happening in the world, it feels good to be hidden away in leafy Oregon. I’m slowly working my way through a “to do” list, and diligently trying to tame the woodsy landscape that surrounds my home. Letting things go…

[larryland]

by Macey Levin

Through history humanity has escaped extinction numerous times but total destruction is still a distinct possibility.  There was, of course, the flood that Noah and his ark overcame after forty-something days.  The Black Plague.  The atomic bombs that closed World War Two, and today who knows what will happen with a narcissistic finger on the red button that would send devastation throughout the world.   This eternal possibility is key to Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth receiving a problematic production at Berkshire Theatre Group‘s Fitzpatrick Main Stage in Stockbridge, MA.

  Wilder won three Pulitzer Prizes for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and the plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth.  His works explore the connection between mankind’s everyday experiences and its place in the universe.  His characters. whether from Peru, Grovers Corners, New Hampshire, or Excelsior, New Jersey, are ordinary people living simple lives.

  In The Skin of Our Teeth we meet George (Danny Johnson,) who has just invented the wheel, and Maggie (Harriet Harris) Antrobus (from the Greek word for “human”,) their children Henry (whose name used to be Cain – Marcus Gladney, Jr.,) Gladys (Claire Saunders,) and Sabina (a la the rape of the Sabine women) the maid.  There are myriad Biblical, historical and mythological references throughout the play.  Though set in 1942, the year it was written, there are many anachronisms. The first act has Excelsior’s citizens waiting for an oncoming ice age as mountains of ice are covering the land. The Antrobus’s pet dinosaur and mammoth come into the house to stay warm; weary and frightened travelers, including Homer, Moses, three Muses and others are invited into the house. In the second act, a monster rainstorm is about to occur. There are contemporary references to Berkshire Medical Center and Outside Mullingar which is running at the Unicorn Theatre.  A present-day thematic note is that the Antrobuses are racially mixed.

  A conceit that occurs several times has actors breaking out of character mid-scene and addressing the audience.  In the first act Sabina, (Ariana Venturi) playing the actress Miss Somerset, tells us she doesn’t understand the play, hates it and maybe we should leave.  Act two is on the Atlantic City boardwalk where the populace awaits the impending storm.  A fortune teller addresses the audience.  In the third act Mr. Antrobus informs the audience that a few of the actors haven’t arrived and some of the designers, a janitor and the head usher will take over those parts, but first the stage manager will run a rehearsal.  The company hopes the audience will forgive them and be patient.

  The subject matter, the end of civilization, is very dark but the first two acts could be played lighter; the darkness of the production is the director’s (David Auburn) choice.  In these acts there are whimsical moments that effectively contrast with the dire circumstances.  Act three, other than the break for “rehearsal,” is heavier; it takes place after a seven-year war when Maggie and Gladys, who has a baby, have been living in a bunker under the house while Henry and George are fighting in the war.  Sabina, who has been a camp-follower, re-joins them.  Father and son argue as to whether the human race can ever stop annihilating itself and do they deserve to survive?

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Johnson and Harris have control of their respective roles as the Antrobuses.  They skillfully mine the humor and sentimental moments while giving depth to the more powerful scenes as does Gladney Jr.’s Henry, especially in the last act when he challenges his father’s optimistic desire to rebuild civilization.  Saunders’ transition from a somewhat ditzy teen-ager to a world-weary mother is touching.  Sabina is the most animated character and Venturi throws out her laugh lines with aplomb.  There are times, however, when her projection could be stronger.

  Auburn’s direction keeps the play moving as he touches Wilder’s thematic intentions.  As mentioned above, however, the tones of the three acts could be more effectively accomplished to enhance these issues.  Act two’s Atlantic City boardwalk uses many actors in addition to the principals.  Some of the staging, along with the set and props, appears haphazard when it should be controlled chaos. Otherwise, Bill Clarke’s sets for the first and third acts  – the Antrobus home before and after the war – accommodate the staging and the surrounding environment.  Daniel J. Kotlowitz’s lighting, like the sets, is too dark except when it functions dramatically for the third act.  The costumes by Hunter Kaczorowski identify the characters’ stations as well as reflecting their personalities.

  The Skin of Our Teeth is not an easy play to produce.  BTG should be congratulated for daring to mount this seventy-seven-year-old play that speaks to our troubled times.

  The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder; Director: David Auburn; Cast: Lauren Baez (Muse, Conveneer, Chair Pusher, Usher Bailey) Lynnette R. Freeman (Homer, Fortune Teller, Ivy) Marcus Gladney Jr. (Henry) Harriet Harris (Mrs. Antrobus) Danny Johnson (Mr. Antrobus) Ralph Petillo (Moses, Bingo Caller, Mr. Tremayne) Claire Saunders (Gladys) Marjie Shrimpton (Muse, Telegraph Boy, Hester) Matt Sullivan (Stage Manager, Broadcast Official) Ariana Venturi (Sabina) Kennedy Haygood, Isabel Jordan, Hanna Koczela, Alex O’Shea, Tony Reimonenq, Julian Tushabe (Acting Interns); Scenic Designer: Bill Clarke; Costume Designer: Hunter Kazorowski; Lighting Designer: Daniel J. Kotlowitz; Resident Composer, Sound Designer: Scott Killian; Wig, Hair and Makeup Designer: J. Jared Janas; Movement Director: Isadora Wolfe; Stage Manager: Abigail Gandy; Running time: two hours, forty five minutes, two intermissions; 7/11/19 – 8/3/19; Berkshire Theatre Group, Fitzpatrick Main Stage, Stockbridge, MA , www.BerkshireTheatreGroup.org; 413-997-4444

REVIEW: “The Skin of Our Teeth” at the Berkshire Theatre Group by Macey Levin Through history humanity has escaped extinction numerous times but total destruction is still a distinct possibility. 

[otc-dramaturgy]

Thornton Wilder Thursday

Today, we’re going to look at Thornton Wilder’s biography a little bit, because I realized that I’m the worst kind of person and I forgot to tell you any of this earlier.

EARLY AND FAMILY LIFE Born on April 17, 1897 in Madison, Wisconsin, Thornton Wilder was the second child born to Amos and Isabella Wilder; his elder brother was named Amos and he had three sisters: Charlotte, Isabel, and Janet. Another child, a twin of Thornton, was stillborn. His childhood was split between the United States and China, due to the tension between his father, whose job placed him in China, and his mother; she referred to their wedding day as “the worst day that ever befell either of them.”

The physical distance between Thornton and his father put an emotional estrangement on the two men; Amos also sent his son to do physical labor on farms over summers, “ridding him of his peculiar gait and certain effeminate ways.” This tension can be seen throughout much of his work: in Our Town, Dr. Gibbs’ gentle admonishment of George for failing to chop wood can be seen as a wish fulfillment, while the physical blowup between father and son in The Skin of Our Teeth is an exaggerated example. Thornton would often write about this later, saying in one letter to his brother, “There are times when I feel his perpetual and repetitive monologue is trying to swamp my personality, and I get an awful rage.” When Amos died, Thornton was the only child who did not attend his funeral.

Wilder, after publishing The Bridge of San Luis Ray, bought a house for his family in Connecticut; though he had a penchant for traveling, he always returned to his family and would later die in Connecticut as well.

EDUCATION Wilder studied at many different schools over his adolescence, including Berkeley High School, California, English China Inland Mission School at Chefoo in Shantung Province, and Thacher School in Ojai, California. He sought higher education at Oberlin College for two years, then transferred to Yale University, where, after a brief delay for military service, he received his undergraduate degree in 1920.

Among his studies, Wilder did a year in Italy, as arranged by his father, studying Latin and classical history at the American Academy in Rome. While there, he attended the first performances of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, which provided a clear impact on his career as a dramatist.

Wilder taught French at Lawrenceville School in Princeton, New Jersey, and later taught at the University of Chicago, where he spent much of his adult life, notably far from his family on the East Coast.

CAREER Wilder is best known for being the only American to date to win a Pultizer Prize for both literature and drama. His novel The Bridge of San Luis Ray won for Literature in 1927, and his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth won for Drama in 1938 and 1943, respectively.

However, Wilder’s career was quite varied; in addition to his prolific teaching experience, as mentioned above, he served several times in the military, for instance, once in the Coast Artillery Core during the First World War, while he was in undergraduate studies at Yale, and again in the Second World War, when he served with Army Air Intelligence. The latter of these led to his position as an official representative of the State Department; he had initially been offered a job as cultural attache in Paris, but injuries sustained in his second military stint made this impossible.

Wilder is criticized by some for his wide range of careers, saying he did not output the same amount as his contemporaries, such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and calling him “flagrantly gregarious.”

RELATIONSHIPS Wilder is not known to have many romantic relationships or lasting friendships at all; his primary connection was to his family. A biographer, Richard Goldstone, once said of him, “A sustained friendship for him was all but an impossibility lying beyond his emotional means.” His strongest friendships were with fellow writers, notably Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway, who he even considered living with. Of Hemingway, Wilder said, “It’s the first time I’ve met someone of my own generation whom I respected as an artist.” Stein and Wilder exchanged innumerous letters after they met and worked together at the University of Chicago; upon her death, he wrote, “WASN’T IT WONDERFUL TO HAVE KNOWN AND LOVED HER?... Long after you and I are dead she will be becoming clearer and clearer as the great thinker and the great soul of our time.”

What is known of Wilder is that his romantic relationships, while fleeting, were largely focused on men. Whether he was a closeted homosexual or had interests in women as well, Wilder’s documented romantic partners were exclusively male. Wilder never married nor had any children, but he was known to write encouraging letters to young writers and was recognized as a strong mentor to upcoming talent.   SELECTED WRITINGS All synopses from the Thornton Wilder Society website.

Fiction: The Cabala, 1926 A young American student spends a year in the exotic world of post-World War I Rome. While there, he experiences firsthand the waning days of a secret community (a “cabala” of decaying royalty, a great cardinal of the Roman Church, and an assortment of memorable American ex-pats. The Bridge of San Luis Ray, 1927 “On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.” By chance, a monk witnesses the tragedy. Brother Juniper then embarks on a quest to prove that it was divine intervention rather than chance that led to the deaths of those who perished in the tragedy. Heaven’s My Destination, 1934 Meet George Marvin Brush — Don Quixote come to Main Street in the Great Depression, and one of Wilder’s most memorable characters. George Brush, a traveling textbook salesman, is a fervent religious convert who is determined to lead a good life. With sad and sometimes hilarious consequences, his travels take him through smoking cars, bawdy houses, banks, and campgrounds from Texas to Illinois — and into the soul of America itself. The Ides of March, 1948 The Ides of March is a epistolary novel set in Julius Caesar’s Rome. Thornton Wilder called it “a fantasia on certain events and persons of the last days of the Roman republic.” Through vividly imagined letters and documents, Wilder brings to life a dramatic period of world history and one of history’s most magnetic, elusive personalities. The Eighth Day, 1967 A tale set in a mining town in southern Illinois about two families blasted apart by the apparent murder of one father by the other. The miraculous escape of the accused killer, John Ashley, on the eve of his execution and his flight to freedom triggers a powerful story tracing the fate of his and the victim’s wife and children. At once a murder mystery and a philosophical story, The Eighth Day is a “suspenseful and deeply moving” (New York Times) work of classic stature that has been hailed as a great American epic.

Full-length Plays: Our Town, 1938 “No curtain. No scenery.” A minimalist theatrical style sets apart the 1938 recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. Wilder’s greatest and best-known work as a playwright, Our Town opens with the Stage Manager’s introduction to Grover’s Corners The Skin of Our Teeth, 1942 Combining farce, burlesque, and satire (among other styles), Thornton Wilder departs from his studied use of nostalgia and sentiment in Our Town to have an Eternal Family narrowly escape one disaster after another, from ancient times to the present. Meet George and Maggie Antrobus (married only 5,000 years); their two children, Gladys and Henry (perfect in every way!); and their maid, Sabina (the ageless vamp) as they overcome ice, flood, and war — by the skin of their teeth. The Matchmaker, formerly The Merchant of Yonkers, 1955 Wilder’s uproarious farce about love and money, stars the irrepressible busybody, Dolly Gallagher Levi, who inspired the Broadway musical, Hello, Dolly! Through Dolly’s subtle machinations, several unlikely couples come together to find happiness in 19th-century New York.

Short Plays: The Long Christmas Dinner and Other Plays in One Act, 1931 Includes: The Long Christmas Dinner, Queens of France, Pullman Car Hiawatha, Love and How to Cure It, Such Things Only Happen in Books, The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden Plays for Bleeker Street, 1962 Includes: Someone from Assisi, Infancy, ChildhoodOthers: Shadow of a Doubt, screenplay, 1942 American Characteristics and Other Essays, essays, 1979

Much of Wilder’s other writing can be found in his many journals, as well as in his letter exchanges, notably the letters between himself and Gertrude Stein.

So that’s a wall of text without a gif. To make up for it: