‘The Skin of Our Teeth’ @ Undermain Theatre
Photos by Paul Semrad
—Martha Heimberg
Dallas weather alert: A glacier is moving toward Undermain Theatre.
Grab a sweater and get your tickets.
Thornton Wilder’s spooky funny classic The Skin of Our Teeth not only reminds us that our planet’s history is cyclical, but that the recurrences come faster and faster. The Ice Age is bearing down on the timeless Antrobus family, a typical middle class New Jersey household of the 1940s—and baby mammoths and dinosaurs (Vermont Horners’ adorable little string-manipulated puppets) are trying to get in and get warmed up.
That’s the kind of space-time crunch that happens when you start at creation and cram everything that happened since into a three-hour play. (With one 15-minute intermission.) But not to worry; time flies when you’re pulling out every trick invented by the human species to keep your family alive in a world where extinction is the byword, and you just might be the major cause of the next wave. Still, the title assures us confidently that humanity is gonna squeeze through every mishap—but just barely!
Stefan Novinski directs this wonderfully wacky 1943 Pulitzer Prize-winning play at Undermain in their 42nd season, giving it a controlled chaos that prompts us to laugh at the inanity of the hapless clan as they fulfill their fated roles in humanity—but then cringe when they turn a blind eye to simmering violence in a troubled son, or self-aggrandizement from a father. Despots around the world are garnering more power and wealth than ever, and our own narcissistic president is right up there with the worst of them. Oh, and there’s global warming with this go-round.
A black-and-white “News of the World” video of glaciers (plus flashes of other world events) are front and center in Undermain’s intimate basement space, where we sit surrounded by large, reassuring concrete columns. We see footage of the theater itself, and are assured that the world will not end—at least not for the next 24 hours. The show will go on! That’s a good sign.
George Antrobus, (a well-intentioned, if easily seduced Jim Jorgensen) and his wife of 5,000 years, Maggie (Emily Gray in steely housewife mode) are trying to save themselves and those around them from an advancing glacier. We meet their over-achieving daughter Gladys (eager, hilarious daddy’s girl Sienna Castaneda Abbott) and wayward son Henry (a violently, painfully traumatized Mac Welch), and their much put-upon maid Sabina (a sassy, seductive Christina Cranshaw), who serves as the narrator, stepping through the fourth wall and speaking to audience, cast, and crew as both Sabina the maid and Cranshaw the actress. One telling scene involves a pissed-off Sabina cleaning house and dismembering a Barbie doll limb for limb, as she gives us her take on the family members. She calls out a local critic and recognizes an S.M.U. grad among the crew.
The third Antrobus child, Abel, is invisible, and we immediately catch the biblical thread: bad boy Henry keeps a slingshot in his back pocket and has a mark on his forehead his mom keeps trying to cover up.
Donna Marquet’s inventive wide-open set design features the frame of a furnished suburban house with glass walls, surrounded by little lighted houses floating in the background. Radio broadcasters and production people are busily at work and the neighborhood soothsayer (spellbinding Rhonda Boutte, no surprise) cruises beneath Steve Woods’ shifting light designs. Paul Semrad’s sound design includes sudden blizzards or the soft sound of waves near an Atlantic City boardwalk. Breianna Bairrington’s costumes, whether dressing a buxom matron, a sizzling siren or a perky teenager, are spot on.
Crises come and go, and Sabina rolls with it. “Have you milked the mammoth?” “Don’t let the fire go out or we’ll all die,” she’s told. No sooner is the Ice Age done, than the Flood comes and we need an ark built.
Can-do Dad George, who has already invented the wheel, the alphabet (he’s especially proud of getting the m and n thing sorted out), and multiplication tables, gives an ark the old college try. Sabina flirts with her employer, and sidles up to him as he pats her on the behind. She’s promoted to steamy siren in a tight red dress when the scene shifts to Atlantic City. Our sexy girl turns the seduction dial up full throttle and pushes George—who’s become the insufferably arrogant president of the Ancient and Honorable Order of Mammals and Humans—to demand a divorce from Maggie. Whoa! That’s family values we’re talking about. Maggie invented marriage way back when, and she knows everything about the tie that binds! She’s also a woman who understands Sabina’s role in the big picture and keeps her safe when the next disaster looms.
Even after the destruction and death of a terrible war, the family of man finds a way to rebuild. In one especially poignant scene late in the play, George returns from the front. Women have held the home front together, of course. Maggie and Sabina, the core of deep strength at the center of our allegoric family, have manually reassembled a wrecked house—pieceing and holding it together with cardboard and string right before our eyes.
George struggles to find the will to go on. Then he lays eyes on his books, the manuscripts saved from fire and ignorance throughout history. In the beginning was the word, and exhausted George finds not only the spark to keep going, but to embrace his strong, able wife and forgive his war-traumatized son—the boy he’s always looked on as a violent force to be pushed from his home.
When optimism and sweat rule, we can scrape through. And when Undermain’s excellent ensemble draws on their talent and dedication, we don’t just see them scrape by with the skin of their teeth—we see them make art. Wow.
The Skin of Our Teeth is Wilder at his best. Go for the grand theater experience. Then go home and think about your role. Lord, let me die, but not die out.
WHEN: February 14-March 8, 2026
WHERE: 3200 Main Street, Dallas (Deep Ellum)
WEB: undermain.org
