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| Spotlight
on the End of the World
by Lainey S. Cronk
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 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.
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