|
Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth is 67 years old but it plays as if it had been written and workshopped last week by one of those Austin indie arts groups of which we are so proud.
It's wild stuff --a history of humankind as embodied by the Antrobus family, with a mad mix-up of times, epic figures, surreal settings and primal myths. Refract that story through the lens of a dramatic structure that the author and actors keep turning into a kaleidoscope, dress it up with Lowell Bartholomee's videos, and live with the fact that you never know what's going to happen next.
Wilder wasn't shy about announcing the epic proportions of this tragicomedy. The family's last name is "Antrobus" -- a label that shouts "human being" or "humankind," derived from the Greek άνθρωπος ("anthropos" -- as in, for example, "anthropology").
Your first act is located in an apparently modern New Jersey, except that it's not modern -- the Ice Age is encroaching. Pert, buxom maid Sabina, played by Amy Lewis, is our chatty chorus, occasionally lapsing from character to comment as Amy Lewis, an actress playing the part of Sabine. Mr. Antrobus is at his office or workplace, working on the alphabet, until he brings home his new invention, the wheel. |
|
|
Under the artistic direction of Norman Blumensaadt, Different Stages and its predecessor the Small Potatoes Theatre Company have furnished Austin Theatre with a considerable library of stage work. The back page of the program for An Inspector Calls lists 109 productions the company has brought to the boards since 1981.
Different Stages has given the city a good dose of the classics and a wide array of works from the British and European stages. The company has often reached back decades in the English-speaking repertoire to present twentieth century works unlikely to be offered by other enterprises in town. Their production last year of Shaw's Getting Married was a fine example of Blumensaadt's taste, dedication and success as a curator.
J.B. Priestly's An Inspector Calls was first performed in 1945. It recounts a story set in 1912 urban Britain. It's a moral fable with an intrigue that inexorably and progressively reveals the hypocrisy of each member and associate of a wealthy capitalist family. Priestly gives the story a twist of the supernatural, but it's essentially a piece preaching to the British middle class about the wickedness of earlier capitalist generations' exploitation of the poor.
The first two productions of An Inspector Calls were in Moscow. The 1946 London production featured Ralph Richardson as the ominous Inspector Goole, Margaret Leighton as ingenue Sheila Birling, and Alec Guiness as her brother Eric. Goole's berating of the non-aristocratic capitalists touched sensibilities in post-war Britain.
|
|
The concept of human cloning is profoundly unsettling.
We like the fact each of us is unique. Individuality situates us in the universe and in our own skins. Each of us might fantasize a different reality or our self as a different individual, but we intuit that even those avatars, if realized, would be unique.
The existence of fraternal twins or triplets is nature's benevolent random trick that reinforces our faith in our own individuality. Nature has made each of us.
But suppose that nature took a backseat in the process? |
|
|
Jennifer Underwood is larger than life. Like famous stage personalities, she captures our attention utterly with her remarkable appearance, conviction and an acting talent that amounts almost to shape-changing.
In Miss Witherspoon, directed by Karen M. Jambon for Different Stages and now playing at the City Theatre, Underwood is a deeply disappointed soul in the afterlife, determined not to give in to the requirement that she be reincarnated. Sometimes, with her stubborn will, she prevails; but when the whizzbang of celestial machinery overcomes her, Jennifer Underwood becomes a cranky newborn child (twice), a distrustful abused teenager (twice), a pet, and the potential savior of the messed-up world. |
|
|
|
|
|
