Skin of Our Teeth

Skin of Our Teeth on Broadway Background

Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning dark comedy from 1943 returns to Broadway with a new energy and a new purpose.

The show originally appeared on Broadway at the Plymouth Theatre in November 1942 and was produced by Michael Myerberg and directed by Elia Kazan.

The comedy/play is a three-part allegory about the life of mankind. When first performed it broke many established theatrical conventions. The book has many uncredited similarities with James Joyce's novel Finnegans Wake, which was published two years before Wilder's Skin of Our Teeth.

What’s Skin of Our Teeth Like?

The show chronicles the lives of the Antrobus family from Excelsior, New Jersey. Their lives span many time periods and during the show they experience apocalypse after another apocalypse. The disasters that befall them include the Ice Age, Noah's biblical flood, world war, famine and finally AIDS.

Indominable Human Spirit

These frightful events keep happening over and over again and the only constant is the family's spirit to get up again and keep going. Their family zeal to recover speaks to the indominable human spirit.

The family's maid serves as the eternal cynic with a bookend monologue at both the start and end of the show. This monologue serves to remind us that we cannot quiet these negative voices inside, but can only use them to help drive us forward.

Is Skin of Our Teeth Good for Kids?

The show does not contain any material that would be harmful to children, but the subject matter of the show is adult themed and deals with many existential issues of why 'we are here?' and 'who are we?'

Some younger patrons may even ask existential questions like "where is the popcorn?" or even "why did we pay for tickets?"