Customer Reviews

Three Plays: Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, and The Matchmaker (Perennial Classics)

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It's hard to imagine that there's a soul out there who hasn't come across at least one of these plays in the course of public education or personal reading, but if you haven't then you should at least give them a chance and take a look. Plays aren't everyone's idea of pleasure reading, but this collection of Wilder's best-known three are among the best-known one-act plays in the American collection. Drawing at will upon the comic and the tragic -- often in the same breath -- Wilder's plays might have prompted the slogan of the recent (and acclaimed) "American Beauty", which implored viewers to "look closer." These three plays are good discussion pieces, palatable introductions to American theater, and insightful explorations into the potential of the theatrical medium.

A little more info on two of the three:

OUR TOWN happens to have been one of the first plays I ever actually studied in a drama class, and I have particularly fond memories of blustering through the part of Mr. Webb in our dramatic reading. The play, which focuses on the lives of the simple townsfolk in Grovers' Corner, New Hampshire, a dry New England town, begins with an observation of the daily lives of the townsfolk. In the second act, it goes on to portray the romance which develops between George Gibbs and Emily Webb, the young lovers who consummate their feelings in marriage at the end of the act. And in the third act, after Emily dies, she finds herself among the mourners at her own wake. Taken as a whole, Our Town shows the reactions of the austere New Englanders to all possible situations -- they are brought to life, portrayed in times of happiness, grief, and peaceful quiet. In addition, Wilder uses the play to make a statement about the futility of living in the past, and forcing the audience to deal with the concept that just like a show, life must go on. In the end, he says, truth can only be found in the future, which it is still in our power to influence and change. Our lives are our own to live, and we must learn to set our own course while we still can. (Of particular interest in this script is the role of the "Stage Manager", who both interacts with the characters and serves as a quasi-omniscient narrator. I think the idea of having a character exist on multiple planes might have been a Thornton first, at least in some regards.)

THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH is a little bit stranger and more avant garde. In a script unlike anything else that Wilder has ever written (to the best of my knowledge), the audience is presented with a detached look at man's natural reaction to crisis and stress. The play focuses around the Antrobus family, simple representatives of the every family, but with a few significant quirks -- the characters seem to be updated (or perhaps reincarnated) versions of the first family -- Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel -- and refuse to establish a consistent setting. Simultaneously set in the prehistoric Ice Age and on the boardwalks of Atlantic City (and by simultaneously I mean that there is no differentiation between the two), and paying no particular attention to the linear laws of time or space, the play draws upon so many stage and literary devices that it eventually makes the head spin. In a particularly powerful conclusion, the play comes entirely round circle, ending with the same lines on which it began, and implying that the entire cycle is about to repeat itself. And that is exactly the point Wilder was getting at in this bizarre and avant garde production -- no matter how much we change, as we evolve from cave-dwellers to farmers to civilized ladies and gentlemen, the more we stay the same. Our features change, but our natures do not. Both a confusing and intensely powerful piece of dramatic scripting, this play is worth reading at least twice. (To the credit of this script, I remember getting chills just reading it to myself for the first time, during certain climactic scenes.)

As for THE MATCHMAKER... I'm not as familiar with it, but I know it's a popular comic script for amateur theater troupes, and served as the basis for the musical comedy "Hello Dolly", in which a widowed matchmaker decides to take a second husband, and tricks him into proposing to her by making a show out of setting him up with another woman. Clever, but not as experimental as the other two...

All in all, this is a collection of plays that should be read at least once, if only so that you can say you didn't care for them. There's a lot here, and Wilder was a master of the short script, and a pioneer in American theater. Give it a shot -- check it out from your library if you're dubious about purchasing scripts you haven't read -- and see what you think,

Skin of Our Teeth and Our Town both were prize-winning plays. The Matchmaker became one of the most popular musicals of all time - Hello Dolly. Thornton Wilder's plays are in production at countless high schools across the country, and that's a pity - few students have the maturity or insight to bring these words strongly to life.

Skin of Our Teeth, the story of the Antrobus family in stone age Atlantic City, NJ, deals with indomitable humanity, and how we can prevail against all odds, but especially against our own impulses. It also brings up the consolations of literature and of past times.

Our Town is a simple little play about love and death, and how life is composed as a series of moments. It is so important to live in every, every, moment.

The Matchmaker is about living life to the fullest, even in the midst of grief and aging.

This makes these plays sound dreadfully simplistic, and full of high-school style morality. Thornton Wilder's writing is full of irony, wit, grace, kind humor, and style. His writing has a deceptive simplicity and rhythm. Read these plays to bring some beauty into your life.

When I received this collection of plays by Thornton Wilder, I compared some of the text to an original acting script, and found that several changes had been made, apparently to make it more socially "correct". For example, in the introductory monolog to Our Town, the playwright's reference to the people living in Polish Town as "foreigners who come to work in the mill" had been completely deleted. I consider this an example of Bowdlerizing, and a big enough change in the text that it may be illegal. I was very disappointed.

I just saw the revival of "The Skin of Our Teeth" for free as part of the New York Shakespeare Festival in Central Park, and I can't begin to tell you how extraordinary it was! I immediately ran out and bought the play, in this edition of "3 Plays," and hearing it again in my head, I'm convinced that this is one of the best American plays I've ever come across. It is crazy and funny and complex; it reaches the heart and asks profound questions, from the meaning of life to the boundaries of theatre. Depicting the resilience and perseverance of the Antrobus family, who, along with their maid Sabina (a great, great part), represent all of humanity, "The Skin of Our Teeth" reminds us that, in spite of war and flood and all misery, "we have to go on for ages and ages yet." An awesome play.

With the centenary of Wilder's birth in 1997, the Yale Repertory Theatre mounted a production of "The Skin of Our Teeth," probably the first professional one it had seen (in this country, anyway) in twenty years. Encountering the play for the first time since reading it in high school, I was struck by its notorious alleged similarities to FINNEGANS WAKE, which got Wilder in trouble when Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson pointed them out upon the play's first production. Although Wilder scholars have always been heatedly hostile towards Campbell and Robinson, there is no doubt that the two men were right: "The Skin of Our Teeth" is obviously inspired by and much indebted to FW (it is probably going too far to call the play an adaptation of Joyce's novel), and anyone doing what Wilder did today would be accused of plagiarism and be sued (and lose).

That said, the play can still hold the stage, although it is not as good a play as "Our Town," which uses the same modernist, fantastical conventions to much stronger effect. Does anyone actually read "The Skin of Our Teeth" these days, or do they buy the three-play book just for "Our Town"?

Thorton Wilder is one of the best playrights of his generation. This book brings together three of his best plays. "Our Town" which is a play centered around one town, and the way life can change within it. "the Skin of Our Teeth", which centers around one family that is going through all the changes that have ever happened in the world, including the ice age, world war 2, the depression, and so on. And finally "the Matchmaker" which is not the best play, but is still worth reading. Thorton Wilder does an amazing job with character developments and sub-plots, and these three plays really show his genius.

Thornton Wilder's reputation as a playwright rests upon three works: the 1938 drama OUR TOWN; the 1943 comedy THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH; and the 1955 THE MATCHMAKER, a farce re-written from a previously failed play titled THE MERCHANT OF YONKERS. The first two of these titles won Pulitzer Prizes; the final title would go on to become the basis for the musical comedy HELLO, DOLLY!, one of the most popular Broadway shows of the 20th Century.

Although its "out of town" opening was nothing short of a debacle, OUR TOWN first charmed and then stunned audiences and critics alike when it reached New York--partly through Wilder's staging concepts (the play is performed on a bare stage and without scenery or hand props) but most particularly through Wilder's delicate story of an ordinary New Hampshire town in the earliest part of the 20th Century. In the first act we become acquainted with the Gibbs and Webb families; in the second act we learn how George Gibbs and Emily Webb come to fall in love and marry. It is charming, guiless stuff--until the third act brings us the town cemetery, where the dead contemplate the nature of life, death, and eternity.

Written in the darkest days of World War II, THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH is a proto-absurdist comedy about an "everyman" family: Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus, their son Henry, their daughter Gladys, and their sultry housemaid Sabina, who live in middleclass comfort in New Jersey. But it is also, most curiously, the middle of the ice age! As the play progresses, Wilder drags the Antrobus family from Noah's flood to the aftermath of an apocalyptic, global war--even as the actors break ranks, dispute the merits of the play, refuse to play scenes, and are sent rushing to the hospital with food poisoning. Can they finish the show? More to the point, can the human race survive?

THE MATCHMAKER is, of course, the famous story of Dolly Gallegher Levi--a busybody who is determined to marry the wealthy Horace Vandergelder. But Horace is stuffy; who wants a husband like that? By putting her hand in here and there, Dolly contrives to unstuff the stuffy, bring the unhappy lovers together, create two new romances, and do well by herself and all those around her.

Wilder was not fond of realistic theatre and all three plays are similar in that they are styled in a very theatrical manner. As noted, OUR TOWN is done without scenery; in a classic production you can see the back wall of the stage itself. THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH is also highly stylized, with bits of the stage flying away and then reappearing, and in all three titles characters suddenly turn to speak to the audience directly--and now and then even emerge from the audience itself.

All of this was very cutting edge for its time, but what really sets Wilder apart is his talent for mixing a slight story with a depth of poetry and theme that rarely occurs on the stage. His plays bring forth great, fundamental questions. What is eternity? What is the future of mankind? What is the nature of happiness? What is life worth--and can it be lived to any point or purpose? His responses are eloquent and more often light than dark.

Samuel French Inc., which holds the amateur performance rights to all these titles, notes that OUR TOWN is performed at least once a day in some part of the world. It is generally regarded as the single best known play of American theatre. Although seldom performed in America today, THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH remains a landmark drama--and is very popular indeed in Europe and most particularly in Germany. And THE MATCHMAKER, although often outshined by its cousin HELLO, DOLLY! remains a favorite as well.

These three plays are presented with a preface by John Guare. Frankly, they would be better left to speak for themselves. Guare seems a great deal less interested in Wilder than in his friends, and most particularly so in Gertrude Stein. The result is a bite of over-written and over-heated academia at its least impressive. Considerably better are the end notes by Tappan Wilder, which describe the original productions and the wider impact of each. But with or without foreword and end notes, these are three masterpieces by a master artist working at the height of his powers. American classics, all three.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Even though it's been 73 years since "Our Town" opened on Broadway, the truths in this sweet slice-of-life play still ring true today: boys still court girls, families find strength in each other, tragedy happens, people have weaknesses, the bonds of love remain strong. Wilder wrote "Our Tow"n because he grew tired of playwrights and replying more on staging and effects than on the imagination of both the actors and the audience -- words that could be applied to Broadway today. The three brilliant plays in this book show that imagination can take an audience to places that fixed sets and fancy effects would only hope to go. A great read.

At the December 2010 meeting, the book discussion group at The LGBT Center in NYC had a nice group to READ OUT LOUD and discuss the play "The Skin of Our Teeth" by Thornton Wilder.

Wilder was gay but didn't include gay content or characters in his plays or dramas. Reading the play silently is nice, but at the meeting we read the second act as a play (with a little bit of gender bending required to fulfill a few of the female roles - but it worked amazingly well. Really!). Most of us weren't wild about the play, but we liked it. Reading the play out loud gave us a much better idea of how the play works: its surrealism, its naturalism, its non-sequiturs (that really aren't non-sequiturs after all), its motivation and motion. Also, it's a very complex play, with a play within the play, and commentary on the play within the play.

Generally we agreed that this is a period piece, best understood as a response to World War II and a belief that we'll be better after it's over, just as we've been better after after each previous war or catastrophe. It was nice to talk about the characters, how they changed, yet how they remained the same, and why the play isn't revived very often.

Our Town is interesting 1939 play stage-managing the life of rural families in NH at turn of the century, focussing on a love affair, rueing that each one of us should spend more time appreciating the fullness and preciousness of the day-to-day world in which we live. Without scenery, the audience must employ its imagination more than usual and thus more fully participates in the production.