THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH. To 10 April.
London
THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH
by Thornton Wilder
Young Vic To 10 April 2004
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 2.30pm 24 March 2pm
BSL Signed 22 March
Runs 3hr Two intervals
TICKETS: 020 7928 6363
www.youngvic.org
Review: Timothy Ramsden 16 March
Post-lapsarian, ante-diluvian a brave play in a bravura staging.Thornton Wilder's 1942 play is a box of tricks think about them and they're apparent enough. But director David Lan and a crack cast keep the plates spinning through a wonderfully exhilarating evening.
Wilder seems to show a normal 1940s American middle-class family, complete with maid (like Ionesco's Bald Prima Donna the play's framed by the Maid's repeated speech about family routine). But, on a normal everyday of the Antrobus family in their town, Excelsior, NJ - mother controlling the kids, dad sending a telegram saying he's late from work - he superimposes mankind's mythic millennia. The pets are a dinosaur and mammoth; Mr A's been busy inventing the wheel.
David Troughton's Antrobus-Adam is a pot-bellied figure of Schweyk-like social density, mixed with dogged purpose. As he invents, while going off the rails (Indira Varma's luscious maid's well-named, cross-culturally referenced to the Roman-raped Sabine women), his wife's the social stabiliser, defending her family before all else.
Maureen Beattie superbly implies depth in a play operating on surface characterisation. There's hardly a hair's-breadth between Mrs Antrobus and Linda Loman calling for attention to be paid. In the central act, replaying the decadent days of Noah in an Atlantic City funfair, Beattie dignifies her tweedily conformist character with conviction and integrity.
Ushering in his mythic sweep, Wilder's quicker to reveal the feminine conflict represented in Beattie and Varma's characters, than the masculine, between father Adam the flawed inventor and son Cain, the violently anti-social destructor. Their eventual bust-up offsets the chimes of human philosophies across the centuries, also bringing thematic closeness to Wilder's most tiresome device last season's experiment, this evening's yawn - of theatrical disruptions.
So far, they've been fun only misfiring when it comes to announcing cast injuries; the focus is on necessary audience involvement not fear for the health of the injured'. But diminishing returns set in.
Yet David Lan and an admirable cast make the most of this rare chance to see the play. Avoid the front rows though it's a high stage and a crick in the neck's no way to appreciate The Skin of our Teeth.
Henry: Jonas Armstrong
Mrs Antrobus: Maureen Beattie
Fortune Teller: Bette Bourne
Gladys: Abby Ford
Telegraph Boy: Alex Kew
Mr Antrobus: David Troughton
Sabina: Indira Varma
Ensemble: Junix Inocian, Emma Kershaw, Camille Litalien, Yael Lowenstein, Simon Rice, Golda Roshuevel, Jason Rowe, Tim Sutton
Announcer: David Calder
Director: David Lan
Designer: Richard Hudson
Lighting: Bruno Poet
Sound: Paul Arditti
Music: Tim Sutton
Choreography: Kate Flatt
Costumes: Jackie Galloway
Assistant director: Andrew Steggall
Assistant designer: Jason Southgate
Assistant choreographer: Yale Lowenstein
Voice/dialect: Neil Swain
2004-03-18 06:46:09