Review: THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH at The Seattle Rep

Dear Readers, I’m all for a show poking fun at darker, heavier topics.  Hell, there’s a comedy on Broadway right now centered around the night President Lincoln was shot.  But if you have something funny or poignant to say, make sure it’s not the same bit for two and a half hours such as was the case with the Seattle Rep’s current production of Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth”. 

Wilder’s play, as best I can describe it without taking copious amounts of hallucinogens, focuses on the Antrobus family as an allegory for all of mankind.  We have the patriarch, Mr. Antrobus (Carlos Lacámara) who seems to be tasked with creating the basics such as the wheel, the alphabet, and math, the matriarch Mrs. Antrobus (Emily Kuroda) who seems to want to keep the peace, even if that means creating chaos to do it.  And their children, their violent elder son Henry (Chip Sherman) or is it Cain, and their perfect little girl, Gladys (Rachel Guyer-Mafune).  They live in their 60’s style rambler home with their pet dinosaurs and their maid Sabina (Sara Hennessy) who keeps breaking character to complain about the play they are all in.  Oh, and there’s an impending ice age coming to kill them all. 

The show goes from its initial time frame to a modern-day political rally to a post war wasteland.  But even as the show spans the breadth of humanity, it really doesn’t have much to say except that the behavior of man is inevitable, and we keep making the same mistakes.  They try and wrap this in humor with the absurdity of it all, but that gets a little monotonous as well.  And that would be the watchword for this show, monotonous.  It started out funny with a killer monologue from Hennessy, but these constant speeches and comments on humanity became wearing.  And that monotony also translates into the pacing of the direction from Dámaso Rodríguez.  It’s an unrelenting drum beat with little variation, and that beat is the beating of the dead horse that is this plotline. 

There are some interesting moments.  Hennessy’s aforementioned opening monologue is fun and quite well done.  And Sherman’s final monologue brings in some much-needed variation and poignancy to the piece.  But those two moments seem to bookend a world of sameness.  A sameness that bored me to the point of madness especially the author’s insistence on saying the name Antrobus every five seconds.  We get it Thornton, it comes from the word “Anthropos” which means human.

The ensemble, including the community ensemble (members of the community they enlisted to fill out the background cast), do what they can with it.  Sherman and Hennessy, as I said are wonderful with their respective moments.  Lacámara manages the patriarch role well and has some fun moments.  Guyer-Mafune is always wonderful but doesn’t seem to have much to do.  Kuroda throws herself into the role but comes across largely one-note and that note is screaming making for an unengaging performance.  And I must mention Sunam Ellis as the beleaguered stage manager of the play within the play who brought in some wonderful moments of much needed levity. 

On the whole, I see where the production, as well as Wilder, wanted to go with this show, but I don’t see, at least this production, as all that successful with so little variation in the evening.  And so, with my three-letter rating system, I give the Seattle Rep’s production of “The Skin of Our Teeth” a not all that interesting or funny MEH-.  It may be a “classic” and it may have won the Pulitzer, but this one just didn’t work for me.

“The Skin of Our Teeth” performs at the Seattle Rep through October 20th.  For tickets or information visit them online at www.seattlerep.org.

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