| re: The Skin of Our Teeth | |
| Last Edit: Delvino 09:39 am EDT 03/16/22 | |
| Posted by: Delvino 09:36 am EDT 03/16/22 | |
| In reply to: re: The Skin of Our Teeth - schauspieler 11:37 pm EDT 03/15/22 | |
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| "A comedy with refugee crises, extinction weather events and pointless wars - What's not to love?" Agreed, those elements are timeless, and ground the play in its humanistic universality. As does Wilder's fun with theater, an aspect that still works remarkably well. He sends up the pretentiousness baked into art's creation and reception, and what hasn't dated at all is the breaking of the 4th wall. What hasn't aged so well? The play's rigid gender roles. Antrobus is the eternal mad genius whose cascade of new ideas define civilization's forward movement, the brilliant male kept alive by the synergy of sexual temptation and a maternal domestic presence. Men have the ideas, women either distract/"inspire" or via their fecundity procreate. It's in the play's text, this division of tasks, and it's hard to make accessible today. (It wasn't all that easy when I played Mr. Antrobus in high school, I must note, but we had this thing called Vietnam to give the play's movement toward war relevance.) A production might turn all of that on its ear in gender fluid casting, perhaps a non-binary Antrobus or Sabina. I'm not making a specific cast for that, just amplifying that the roles are so gender-specific in Wilder's world building, it might be off-putting to many in today's climate. I don't see how you can stage the play now -- especially that second act in Atlantic City -- without entering uncomfortable waters of sexual politics. Maybe I'm wrong. |
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