Spotlight on the End of the World

Live piano music floats over the audience’s heads. The spotlight floods the stage, and a redheaded maid in chic black and white appears to exclaim, “Here it is the middle of August and the coldest day of the year. It’s simply freezing; the dogs are sticking to the sidewalks; can anybody explain that?”

Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth” is PUC’s latest stage production; and though it is showing on a small, somewhat unremarkable stage, its array of comic wit and incisively thought-provoking questions transcends the venue to move and delight audiences.

“The Skin of Our Teeth” sports some of the same cast and directing team that produced last spring’s “Fiddler on the Roof” at Lincoln Theater. Students Cammie Wheeler, Tim Wolcott, and Rachel Reeves capably take on the leading roles, while other students and faculty play characters that range from a mammoth to a bingo parlor manager. The production is under the expert direction of San Francisco-based director and PUC Resident Artist Mei Ann Teo and dancer and choreographer Casey Delaney.

While this production of Wilder’s play keeps viewers laughing and engaged, it also delivers a bundle of powerful and timely messages about humanity and hope; it sends the audience away pondering their own lives and the future of the world as they know it.