★★★★★ The Skin of Our Teeth
When done right—and David Auburn’s production at Berkshire Theatre Group is done very right indeed—Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth retains its power to amuse, baffle, and break your heart all at once. It centers on George and Maggie Antrobus of Excelsior, N.J., given bravura performances by Danny Johnson and Harriet Harris as they suffer three acts of catastrophe: in order, a new ice age, a flood, and the aftermath of a seven years’ war in which no one remembers who won or lost but everyone’s been devastated. As you can guess, the aim is to generalize the human experience back through recorded history (and even further: the bourgeois Antrobuses also go by Adam and Eva, celebrating their 5,000th wedding anniversary along the way). And given that Wilder began planning his epic with the break of European war in 1939, and premiered it during America’s first, disastrous post-Pearl Harbor year, it took a certain amount of prescience, not to say courage, to predict that mankind would work everything out satisfactorily in the end, at least until the next natural or unnatural cataclysm. Many, I daresay, would classify such optimism as inappropriate to the present day; others, as necessary to it.
Auburn and company fully embrace Wilder’s idiosyncratic rag-and-bone aesthetic, composed of equal parts Finnegans Wake (the cyclical nature of life; overlapping time frames), Hellzapoppin (knockabout vaudeville turns), and the author’s own keen, academic intelligence. Bill Clarke’s set design qualifies as midcentury cluttered American Attic, complemented by Hunter Kaczorowski’s cannily-chosen thriftshop costume pieces and Daniel J. Kotlowitz’s moody lighting, and the acting style is as vigorous as it is ever sensitive to the nuances of behavior. I particularly enjoyed Ariana Venturi as all-purpose seductress Sabina, and Claire Saunders and Marcus Gladney Jr. as the couple’s willful children. (Son Henry, née Cain, was originated by the young Monty Clift, who cannot have been as terrifying or moving as Gladney.) All concerned truly rise to the occasion of the third act, particularly Harris, whose savage affirmation of human survival after years of deprivation rivals that of Mother Courage herself.
★★★ Tell Me I’m Not Crazy
Some 30 miles north of Thornton Wilder’s macro view of human resilience as enacted in Stockbridge, Williamstown Theatre Festival premieres Sharyn Rothstein’s micro portrait of one suburban family’s reaction to such contemporary stress points as crime allegedly committed by immigrants; breast-feeding vs. formula; the diagnosing of acting-out toddlers; working moms who Want It All; and stay-at-home dads who suspect in their heart of hearts they’re not getting Any Of It. Responsive to the Baby Boomers who make up a huge percentage of today’s theater audiences, the play also takes up the difficult transition to retirement for those for whom losing employment means losing their way, and their spouses who have to bear the brunt of the resentment. More than anything else, though, Rothstein is interested in what happens when a pistol is brought within the circle of four seemingly well-adjusted, reasonable, liberal citizens. Admirers of Chekhov will be reassured that when Sol (Mark Blum) pulls out the Glock 26 he’s purchased for the purpose of home defense, it does eventually go off.
The play is stuffed, truth be told overstuffed, with issues and incident, and far too many moments when a line of dialogue is followed by a portentous pause and then a narrative-changing announcement. But when not lurching into melodrama it’s lively and funny, and timely enough to engage grownups of all ages in its summary judgment, very much in line with that of The Skin of Our Teeth, i.e. everything’s gonna be O.K. Tell Me I’m Not Crazy should become a mainstay of the still-vital network of regionals and little theaters, which will be lucky to feature such a skillful quartet as Blum, Jane Kaczmarek, Mark Feuerstein, and Nicole Villamil, ably directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel, who makes even the scene changes pulsate with characterization.
