The Skin of Our Teeth, 1983, Old Globe Theatre, American Playhouse

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  • čas přidán 29. 10. 2020
  • This is the Old Globe Theatre production of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, which was broadcast live on PBS's American Playhouse on January 18, 1983.
    directed by Jack O'Brien
    with Harold Gould, Jeffrey Combs, Sada Thompson, Monique Fowler, Blair Brown, John Houseman, and Rue McClanahan
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Komentáře • 50

  • @nestaeinon1853
    @nestaeinon1853 Před 2 lety +42

    Jeffrey Combs is so beautiful

    • @inkyguy
      @inkyguy Před rokem +1

      He is. I was attracted to him when this was originally broadcast and I was still just a kid.

  • @Ema-nimator
    @Ema-nimator Před 7 měsíci +9

    Definitely an oddball play, but I think everyone did their parts really well, especially Jeff❤

  • @rukeyser
    @rukeyser Před 7 měsíci +6

    We all grew up with Our Town. I read this when I was a teenager - it was so strange and goofy and ambitious. I didn't know that last word then.
    I recommend the CZcams posted excerpts of VIVIAN LEIGH as Sabrina. Absolutely brilliant - as is the cast and production.

  • @dylanmcloughlin2187
    @dylanmcloughlin2187 Před 2 lety +11

    I pitched the idea of a play without a fourth wall, where the director and crew were characters, and some of the "crowd" were placed cast members,, and the director would get mad when actors missed cues or lines. He responed by telling me he'd send me a play. This was that play.

  • @HoloFizz
    @HoloFizz Před měsícem +1

    Going in I wasn't expecting to feel so touched as I was by the end. That was wonderful.

  • @vincentf1649
    @vincentf1649 Před rokem +8

    this play is fucking crazy

  • @mattdeans9873
    @mattdeans9873 Před 3 lety +54

    The posting of this video stands as a shining example of how awesome the existence of CZcams is. Thanks for a wonderful post. Brilliant performance of a Masterpiece in playwrighting. Don't miss it if you havent seen it. I'm just blown away

    • @inkyguy
      @inkyguy Před rokem +1

      So impressed was I by this play, and having no other way to see it again after its original run on PBS in 1983, that I journeyed to the William Paley Museum of Television and Radio in New York City to make a request for it to see it again about 15 years later.
      I’m so pleased that someone was able and willing to post it. It is an amazing play and a brilliant production with a star cast.

    • @nataliesiegel9801
      @nataliesiegel9801 Před rokem

      H

  • @MonkWithoutACause
    @MonkWithoutACause Před 2 lety +22

    The Jeffrey Combs godhood continues unabated.

  • @ausbrum
    @ausbrum Před 3 lety +7

    The Skin of Our Teeth toured Australia after WW2 in a production by the Old Vic Theatre starring Vivian Leigh and Laurence Olivier. It was partly a PR venture by Britain to defect a move to American influence on Australia after the war (oddly,The Vic chose an American play) and played to sell out seasons in all the mainland capitals and New Zealand

  • @mikesnyder1788
    @mikesnyder1788 Před 3 lety +10

    A glorious production of a wonderful and highly entertaining play! I first saw The Skin while my future wife was attending the University of Minnesota in the summer of 1980. Forty years later (and during the pandemic) I am so enjoying this production!

  • @isabeldonahue4157
    @isabeldonahue4157 Před rokem +2

    Sada Thompson is always great, no matter where she stars in. Blair Brown also a great actress.👍🏻👍🏻

  • @Dogpile1225
    @Dogpile1225 Před 3 lety +13

    My mother did Blair Browns costumes for the show. A Local 122 stage crew production. I was about 8yrs old, but will never forget.

    • @mikesnyder1788
      @mikesnyder1788 Před 3 lety +2

      What a great memory to share with us! I absolutely love this play and I bet your mother did too!

  • @piecesofme8531
    @piecesofme8531 Před 2 lety +5

    Thorton Wilder treated theater as a group therapy session.

    • @inkyguy
      @inkyguy Před rokem +1

      So did the ancient Greeks.

  • @justouribe558
    @justouribe558 Před 3 lety +4

    I attended this play at The Goodman Theatre at Chicago ... what a Marvelous experience !!!

  • @diegojimenez8757
    @diegojimenez8757 Před 4 měsíci

    this play blows my mind every time i watch it

  • @JeffreySelbst
    @JeffreySelbst Před 4 měsíci

    I love this play. I played one of the dinosaurs in my high school producion.

  • @inkyguy
    @inkyguy Před rokem +3

    Thank you for posting this. I watched it as a child on PBS. It nurtured my love of theater. I was transfixed. Even then I knew on some deep, basic, primitive and indescribable level that I was in the presence of genius. Using words I now only have as an adult I can now say that by the end of the play I was in a “holy place,” transported to another level. I had a genuinely visceral experience of theatrical catharsis, an emotional experience I had no word for until I learned the word for it in college.
    Thornton Wilder’s play is an incredible feat thrown at the audience at almost breakneck speed with eternal truths leavened with brilliant humor. It posseses amazing insight into humans and our human nature - or narures - our history and culture, gender roles and archetypes, our duality of nobility and goodness versus our inextricablly interwoven innate savagery and cruelty, all simultaneously mixed with a commentary on American middle class culture and values. Our essential animal need to survive and procreate alongside our mind's need to discover, invent, experiment, create and to seek meaning and the transcendent - our essential animal identity joined at the hip with our need to eat, drink, mate and predominate.

  • @johnadams1885
    @johnadams1885 Před rokem +1

    so underrated

  • @cjgermann9871
    @cjgermann9871 Před 3 lety +10

    I can’t be the only one in here for school

  • @marisarostellato2426
    @marisarostellato2426 Před 3 lety +2

    Thank you..Wonderful..It's good look Sada Thompson..great actress..WOW. Fantastic production....Marisa Italy.

    • @isabeldonahue4157
      @isabeldonahue4157 Před 2 lety +1

      Sada was so funny in this play. She always lights up a room. She’s my favorite actress. 👏🏻

    • @inkyguy
      @inkyguy Před rokem +1

      And having just come off the run as the materfamilias Katherine Lawrence on the ABC Television drama _Family_ which left the air just three years before, she was perfect for the role of the Eternal Mother.

  • @DrJones20
    @DrJones20 Před rokem +1

    Harold Gould is the best 👍

  • @leorodriguez1352
    @leorodriguez1352 Před rokem

    Thanks for posting!

  • @samadler3
    @samadler3 Před 2 lety

    Wonderful production.

  • @EmoryStudy
    @EmoryStudy Před 10 měsíci +2

    I performed in this play in college 😅

  • @square-on-wheels
    @square-on-wheels Před 2 lety +1

    Thanks, CZcams!

  • @rebeccachamberlain543
    @rebeccachamberlain543 Před 8 měsíci +2

    19:45

  • @TheFaustianMan
    @TheFaustianMan Před 2 lety

    He ripped off James Joyce and dumbed it down. 🤨😐😑

    • @MonkWithoutACause
      @MonkWithoutACause Před 2 lety

      Thorton Wilder. Our Town and Pullman Car Hiawatha I know, this one not so much. Sort of a lukewarm metaphysicist? I still love his plays.

    • @inkyguy
      @inkyguy Před rokem +1

      Hardly.

    • @RayFromLUCKYSHADOW
      @RayFromLUCKYSHADOW Před rokem +1

      You read that somewhere or noticed it yourself? I read on Wikipedia that Joseph Campbell accused him of taking elements of Finnegan's Wake.
      This play, reading this play (I've never seen it performed 'til this video), was a huge influence on me. So naturally I was bummed to learn he may have cribbed parts of it.
      So I read a synopsis of Finnegan's Wake. I can't make heads or tails of the synopsis even, and the actual book is supposedly written in an intentionally dense style where he mixes English and Gaelic words and makes up words, etc. I couldn't determine from the synopsis what it has to do with THIS. Except that they both hint at bigger subjects, statements on the nature of man and society- though Joyce apparently goes out of his way to obscure those themes under impossible prose.
      Have you read it? I've never met anyone who has. I know a couple people who claim to love Joyce, go to Bloom's Day every year, etc. They haven't even read it.
      If you have, HOW is it similar? What I'm guessing is Wilder may have been influenced by some of Joyce's ideas. Same as Hesse was with Nietzsche and Jung. There would be no Demian, or it would have been a very different book, had he never read Nietzsche or Jung. But he created from those ideas something different and more palatable, and he credited them! This probably could've all been solved if Wilder simply had Sabina make a couple asides, "This is getting a litte too James Joyce for my money" or something like that. "Hmm, SOME-body really read their James Joyce, huh, folks?" Something like that.
      'Cause plot-wise, structure-wise, I don't see how they have anything in common. I'm sorry, but Finnegan's Wake sounds completely obnoxious. Intentionally hard to penetrate prose? Eff you, buddy. Haha. We've got stuff to do. You got something to tell us, friggin tell us!

    • @slaypaul
      @slaypaul Před 2 měsíci +1

      And a good thing, too.
      Or:
      And who did Joyce rip off?
      Or:
      Everyone ripped off Homer.
      No, here:
      I don't remember any dinosaurs in Joyce. . . .

    • @galenfott
      @galenfott  Před měsícem +1

      This production, at least, gives a tip of the hat:
      1:31:45