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'Skin' displays impressive body of work

The Antrobus family certainly faces some trying times, but the drama department that brings them to life could not have started off its new season on a more triumphant note.

It helps that the production company is working with Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winner "The Skin of Our Teeth." It's quite a meaty dish to sink one's fangs into.

"Skin" emerged in 1942 as an antidote, of sorts, to World War II pessimism. Wilder created three separate Job-like trials for the Antrobuses, which includes father (Daniel S. Perez), mother (Laura Tetlow), daughter Gladys (Lauren Rooker) and son Henry (Marcus Kagler, full of devilish expressions) -- though we learn in a revelation too amusing to give away in this writing that Henry is not his real name.

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    Set in three acts, "Skin" opens at the dawn of the ice age, as the Antrobus family seems to face certain doom. It doesn't take long before their maid Sabina (a luminous Emily Swallow) breaks the fourth wall separating actor from audience to state "I don't know what will become of us" right before a piece of scenic designer James Bakkom's set topples over.

    Mr. Antrobus has come home after a particularly difficult day at work, having invented the wheel, the number "one hundred" and separated "m" from "n" to finalize the alphabet. But he cannot relax at home; he has to kick out their family pets, a dinosaur and a mammoth (played in full costume by the dexterous Lolita Foster and Billy Robison, respectively) so that other refugees, including Homer and Moses can warm themselves by the fire.

    It's a close call but the Antrobus family survives, only to face another catastrophe in 1952 Atlantic City. It is here where the Fortune Teller (Fri Forjindam) delivers several of the witticisms with which Wilder peppers his play. She warns that we can read the future, but are incapable of discerning one's past. Another pearl of wisdom: "Everyone's in the way, except for one's self."

     
    Quick Cut
    "The Skin of Our Teeth"
    By Thornton Wilder
    At the Culbreth
    Oct. 11-14

    It is at this point that "Skin" begins to lull, an inevitability after director Robert Chapel's crackerjack opening act. With so much activity going on across the stage, it is hard to focus in on anything, and as a result Forjindam's scene becomes too static for her to command the stage.

    It is also here where Tetlow emerges as the sympathetic heroine, much more so than Sabina, who in Act II attempts to steal away Mr. Antrobus. The tightly wound Mrs. Antrobus loses her grip on her loved ones. Yet she constantly defends her family and tries to save them, even her eternally mischievous son. Tetlow makes Mrs. Antrobus a mother courage for the ages, and we believe in her throughout the production as a result.

    With its many asides and cultural references (including "Charlie's Angels" and "Singin' in the Rain"), it would be easy to dismiss "Skin" as mere self-parody, to regard such elements as mere throwaway filler. However, their true function is to reflect a few of the more triumphant, easy-going moments in our lexicon of entertainment.

    Actually, the play has more than its share of pathos as well. Act III, which returns its setting to the Excelsior, N.J., home of Act I, finds its characters again having survived disaster. But this time the atrocity was a man-made one, a war, and it causes a greater fracture within the Antrobus household.

    I'd be remiss in championing the Culbreth's rendition of "Skin" if I didn't mention the acting triumvirate of Perez, Swallow and Tetlow. Watching such pros at work makes for very easy viewing. The nimble numbness Swallow brings to Sabina is a nice compliment to the modern maturity she displayed last fall as Sheila in "A Chorus Line."

    And Perez, last year's "Uncle Vanya," again demonstrates such mastery of craft that to advise his performance in any way would be more condescending than constructive. But I would caution those who plan to see the show to pay extra close attention to his work at the beginning of Act II and the last 20 minutes of the show; it'd be a sin to miss out on jewels that precious.

    "Skin" toes the line between optimism and pessimism during its three-hour run. While it shows how resilient the human spirit can be, confronting diversity head-on and triumphing in front of it, the play's cyclical structure forces us to ask what the point of such triumph is if we are only to come face to face with another trial down the road.

    That's a choice that Wilder leaves to us upon the play's end; as for me, I'll choose optimism. If "Skin" were to have a theme song, I have a hunch Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" would win out over R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World as We Know It"

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