by Tony Annicone

Wilbury Theatre Group’s current production is the 1943 Pulitzer Prize winning play “The Skin of Our Teeth” by Thornton Wilder. It opened on Broadway on November 18, 1942 and ran for 355 performances. The show also written in 1942 is an allegory on the history of mankind, told through the story of one family. It is a mixture of contemporary and biblical events and employs a farcical style seen in Wilder’s “The Matchmaker” as well as the presentational style seen in his “Our Town.” The phrase used as the title comes from the King James Bible, Job 19:20 “My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.” We meet the Antrobus family and their maid, Sabina who come from New Jersey. We barely escaped the depression by the skin of our teeth exclaims Sabina as Wilder works the title of the show into the dialogue. We also meet a woolly mammoth and a dinosaur in their home which helps give the show a theatrical mixture of farce, absurdism, satire and burlesque.

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