The Skin of Our Teeth

by Thornton Wilder

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Critical Overview

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Since its premiere, The Skin of Our Teeth has maintained a solid critical reputation, earning consistent critical acclaim and winning over new generations of Americans with its frequent revivals.

The original Broadway production, which opened on November 18,1942, prompted reviewers like the New York Daily Telegraph's George Freedley to comment both that "Wilder certainly has the most vivid imagination in the theater today," and that the play is "a perfect piece of theater.'' Although a few critics complained that the work lacked substance and that Wilder's anti-illusion staging devices were awkward, such voices were distinctly in the minority.

The play did generate some controversy when two authors, Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson, published an article in the Saturday Review of Literature claiming that Wilder had plagiarized James Joyce's novel Finnegan 's Wake (1939). Campbell and Robinson carefully pointed out the similarities in plot, theme, and presentation between the two works. Wilder, who freely admitted Joyce's influence on his play, did not directly answer the charges but merely encouraged critics to read both texts and judge for themselves. A small flurry of articles on the issue followed, some poked fun at Campbell and Robinson while most acknowledged that Wilder's use of Joyce's novel was no different than many other dramatists' creative use of their sources. Although this controversy may have prevented the New York drama critics from naming it the year's best play, The Skin of Our Teeth still won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1942 and ran for 355 performances.

In 1945, a London production starring Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier was also a success. Though the Soviet Union banned performances of Wilder's plays, other European countries responded favorably to The Skin of Our Teeth; performances in Amsterdam and Bavaria, as well as a 1946 London revival, were well-attended and positively reviewed. German theatergoers particularly loved the play, which offered hope for revitalization to a broken people. In years to come, the play would become even more highly regarded—and receive more critical attention—in German-speaking countries than in the United States.

By the 1950s, the play's reputation was solidly established. In 1952, Sheldon Cheney, in his survey of the history of theater The Theatre: Three Thousand Years of Drama, Acting, and Stagecraft, would pronounce The Skin of Our Teeth"the most notable event of the forties." Two years later Frank M. Whiting's An Introduction to the Theater would tell readers that "any survey of American play writing must recognize the importance of Thornton Wilder." By 1956, several academic articles about The Skin of Our Teeth were published, and the work was discussed in three books on drama. Scholars continued to praise Wilder's theatrical technique and began to associate his work with Brechtian epic-theater. Critics also noted Wilder's influence on European absurdist drama.

In 1961, Rex Burbank published the first book entirely devoted to Wilder's work. Though this text would be followed by several other full-length studies in succeeding decades, and Wilder would continue to hold the status of a respected literary figure, his writings would not receive as much academic attention as some of the dramatists of the next generation like Arthur Miller (The Crucible) and Tennessee Williams (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof). Some critics attribute this relative neglect to the fact that Wilder's essential optimism and classical ideals were at odds with the late-twentieth century preference for the pessimistic worldview of modernist works influenced by romantic aesthetics.

Despite scholars' reserved responses, in the last half of the century live performances of The Skin of Our Teeth have continued to be popular...

(This entire section contains 789 words.)

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A 1955 revival at the National Theater in Washington, D.C.— starring Helen Hayes, Mary Martin, and George Abbot—earned critical raves. And although a national touring production of the play was less successful, the play again pleased critics when it was included as part of the American "Salute to France" in Paris. In 1961 the play once more went abroad as part of the Theatre Guild American Repertory Company's world tour and was embraced by audiences in countries as diverse as Chile, Greece, Trinidad, and Sweden. Americans again received the play favorably in a 1975 Kennedy Center production that was part of the national Bicentennial celebration, and more recently, a 1983 PBS "American Playhouse" production earned good reviews.

Throughout the 1990s, the play has remained a perennial favorite of high school, college, and community theater In 1997, the centennial of Wilder's birth prompted numerous revivals of his plays, as well as the creation of an internet web page devoted to his life and writings. Today, The Skin of Our Teeth is not only performed frequently but also appears regularly in literature anthologies and on college course syllabi. It holds a place, alongside Wilder's Our Town, as one of the best examples of mid-twentieth-century American drama.

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