As pertinent today as when it was written during World War II, The Skin of Our Teeth celebrates humanity’s resilience in the face of climate change, floods, fire, plague and war. The cast of colourful characters includes the Antrobus family, their maid Sabina, a pet dinosaur and a woolly mammoth. Combining tragedy with comedy, wit, intelligence and imagination, the play, as Francis Fergusson wrote, is ‘a marriage of Plato and Groucho Marx.’

Written in 1942, The Skin of Our Teeth was Wilder’s 6^th play and would win him his 3^rd Pulitzer Prize. The play opened on Broadway at the Plymouth Theatre, directed by Elia Kazan (On the Waterfront, Streetcar Named Desire) and starred Tallulah Bankhead, Fredric March, Florence Eldridge and Montgomery Clift. It went on to play for 355 performances, considered his theatrical masterpiece and broke nearly every theatrical convention of the time.