Theater review -- Tom Titus

Given the sort of cutting-edge, envelope-pushing, often bizarre

choices UC Irvine’s drama department has made lately, it might seem a bit

strange closing the season with a 60-year-old play by the author of “Our

Town” and “The Matchmaker.”

Yet Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth” bears a much closer

resemblance to a few of UCI’s previous offerings -- “The Love of Three

Oranges” and “Promenade” -- than it does to the aforementioned works,

between which it was tucked in 1942. Wilder was years ahead of his time,

seemingly anticipating the avant-garde and absurdist movements of the

1960s and ‘70s.

At UCI, director Keith Fowler has mounted a wonderfully probing

production that not only breaks the fourth wall but kicks the stuffing

out of it. From the outset, the audience is in on the gag, or the

succession of gags, which veer from biting satire to dark allegory and

back again.

The play centers on Wilder’s eternal survivors, the Antrobus family

who prevail for thousands of years from the Garden of Eden (their

surviving son was named Cain, though now he prefers Henry) to a

post-apocalyptic period after mankind is all but devastated by a nuclear

war. One must remember that the play was written just a year into World

War II, when the outcome was anything but preordained.

Even more, however, its focus is on Sabina, the feisty family maid and

liaison to the audience. Lisa Clayton, UCI’s resident scene stealer and

scenery chomper, finally has a role suited to her prodigious comic

talents. She attacks it with glee and gusto. With periodic outbursts of

“I can’t play this scene,” Clayton reminds us that it’s only make-believe

before stepping back into character and beautifully attacking the show’s

juiciest role.

Chris Wolfe assumes the everyman character of George Antrobus --

inventor of the wheel, the alphabet and various other examples of man’s

progress -- with a wry command and an overreaching sense of weariness. As

his cold, overprotective wife, Maria Mayenzet successfully spoofs the

domestic control exercised by the women of the period.

Thrust from the wings into an occasional confrontation with the

actors, Chris Smith portrays the exasperated stage manager, Mr.

Fitzpatrick, with seething officiousness. Safiya Fredericks has a

splendid extended cameo as a fortune teller in the second act, set on an

Atlantic City boardwalk, but still just before the Great Flood of

biblical lore.

The large and versatile supporting cast fills a variety of roles from

dinosaurs to understudy fill-ins, the latter guise part a pointed

third-act spoof of the theater in general. Of these, Bonnie Walker makes

the most indelible impression as a statuesque beauty with little between

her ears.

Abetted by authentic-looking black-and-white newsreels and a breakaway

setting superbly designed by Christopher Sousa-Wynn, “The Skin of Our

Teeth” is satire with all the stops out. Samantha White’s costumes and

the lighting designs of Jason Byron Teague also are first rate

throughout.

If Wilder spared the backstage crew with his scant designs for “Our

Town,” he made up for it a few years later with “The Skin of Our Teeth,”

wherein everything but the proverbial kitchen sink is utilized. And in

the comic chaos ostensibly preceding the third act, UCI’s backstage

worker bees are revealed assembling and disassembling the elaborate

plethora of properties.

Despite its dark corners, “The Skin of Our Teeth” is an optimistic,

ultimately uplifting exercise that celebrates mankind’s survival

instinct. At UCI, Fowler’s ensemble revives this offbeat classic with an

abundance of style and energy.

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Daily Pilot. His reviews

appear Thursdays and Saturdays.

FYI

WHAT: “The Skin of Our Teeth”

WHERE: UC Irvine Little Theater at the UCI campus, corner of Campus

and University drives

WHEN: 8 p.m. tonight, Sunday and Wednesday through June 8, and 2 p.m.

June 8

COST: $7-$11

PHONE: (949) 824-2787