5 For $10: The Skin of Our Teeth

A rain storm reminiscent of the one that blacked out my high school and turned the courtyard into a small pond a few years ago interrupted our temperate southern Californian winter yesterday.

While it was probably not very smart of me to trek out into the storm in my canvas paisley shoes (they were completely soaked through within two minutes of my stepping out of Tenaya Hall and a good amount of water got caught between the undersides of my feet and the shoes' rubber soles, so I had quite a squishy walk in between my classes), the brisk rain was a refreshing reminder of what winters were like back home in San Francisco. Knowing that the spot of bad weather was only temporary and that we would soon be back to our chilly-but-not-cold winter days made me appreciate the rain and puddles all that much more.

The rain may have amused me, but I was clearly in the minority with that opinion; just about everybody else was miserable and spirits around here were grayer than the sky outside. Every aspect of daily life seemed to be interrupted with the unexpected bout of rain - my Friday night theater-going plans included.

When I looked outside the window at around 5 pm and was greeted with a pitch black sky and a gust of wet wind strong enough to rattle the panes of glass in its frame, I looked to my remaining roommate (the other one had gone home to LA for the weekend) and we both decided that the three-fourth mile walk to Potiker Theater was too much to handle in this extreme weather.

The Friday-night at the theater that I had so looked forward to was going to have to wait and become a Saturday matinee instead.

The more highly anticipated something becomes, the more spectacular it has to be to impress, so it was really saying something when I found myself raving to complete strangers, who were probably more interested in the french fries they were ordering than in theater, about how blown away I was by the play I had to wait an extra seventeen hours (in addition to the weeks after purchasing my season theater subscription) to see while waiting for my Garden Burger at Plaza Cafe after the show.


"The Skin of Our Teeth," the 1942 play by Thornton Wilder, was the first in the series of five shows in my "5 for $10" student theater subscription. The two student cabaret shows that I attended earlier this month were great, but the UCSD Theatre production of "The Skin of Our Teeth" was clearly on a whole nother level; I was very impressed by the professionalism and sheer talent of all the actors and actresses on stage.

Every cast member was amazing in their parts, but I thought Rebecca Levy, who portrayed Sabina, and Josh Wade, who took on the parts of the Announcer and Homer, gave especially stand-out performances. Levy, as Sabina, broke in and out of character seamlessly and her strong performance really drove the plot forward without a hitch. Wade was absolutely hilarious as the Announcer; I started grinning and laughing the moment the theater lights dimmed and he stepped onto stage to deliver the introductory lines of the play. His silent extension of Homer from the end of the first act into the first intermission and the attempted interactions with the members of the audience walking near the edge of the stage were too funny!

Sometimes it takes a few minutes for the audience to get hooked into the plot of a play (it certainly took a while for me to get into Olympus Inc., and other high school productions I have attended), but with the outstanding performances of Wade and Levy as the first two characters on stage, I was instantly drawn into the story and there was no period of confused transition.

The play itself was brilliantly written and it was brought to life spectacularly by the UCSD Theatre department. It was a little surprising to see how the issues and crises that were on the minds of Americans in the war-torn 40's were still just as, if not more, applicable in today's society.

Even if all the insightful messages of the play went over your head, the insanely farcical nature of the first two acts (the third act is much more serious, especially near the end) would be enough to satisfy anybody's enjoyment quota for any live performance - dinosaurs, mammoths, and a rocker Moses accompanied by Homer on the guitar? Tell me that wouldn't be worth seeing all on one stage in one act!

Two and a half hours divided into three acts with two intermissions was pretty long for a play, but I enjoyed every single minute of it and walked out of the theater with the same grin that had first appeared on my face at the beginning of the show still going strong.

Olympus, Inc.

Even though World Literature 2, the second half of a year-long freshman English class at my high school, was supposed to focus on ancient mythology, my misfortune of being near the very end of the alpha-rotation for Arena Day that year left me with an incompetent student teacher as my instructor for the course. While I enjoyed the books we read in the class (Animal Farm and The Diary of Anne Frank), it would have been nice to get that background in mythology we were supposed to have by the end of our first year in high school.

As a result, I know close to nothing about Greek and Roman mythology and anything dealing with those two topics is inexplicably intimidating to me.

That missing foundation in mythology sure would have been helpful to me when we were studying LeBrun and history painting in my Art History class earlier this quarter, and I probably would have gotten into the brilliantly written plot of "Olympus Inc.," Company 157's final production for Fall Quarter, much more quickly at today's performance with that knowledge in mind.


While I took the time to skim the "Brief Lesson in (Some) Greek Mythology" printed in the program as I waited for the performance to begin in the semicircular theater in Galbraith Hall, the condensed overviews of each god and goddess did not sink in quickly enough for me to catch many of the snide quirks and nuances in each reincarnated character's personalities during most of the first act of the play.

It wasn't until I really studied the information on the page more carefully during intermission that I began to truly appreciate the excellent writing and extremely talented performances by the cast.

Even though there were a few very funny moments scattered throughout the first act, I thought some parts moved a little too slowly, though not knowing the history behind each character's inspiration probably affected my understanding of the characters and the plot when they were first introduced.

When I finally started to become more acquainted with each character and the plot near the end of the first act, things really started to pick up speed, and the entire second act was absolutely hilarious.

The final scene, featuring Jesus (pronounced "HEY-SEUS"), Mary and Joseph, a Star War-esque revelation, and a nod of the hat to classic Scooby Doo, was probably the most brilliantly written scene in the entire play; every single tidbit (no matter how small or insignificant it seemed in the first act) mentioned earlier somehow found its way back into the final scene and the culmination of all those familiar elements put into the outrageous new situation was side-splittingly hilarious. I was laughing so hard that I was gasping for air at one point.

At the beginning of the quarter, my history professor used the "law of storytelling," where everything mentioned must hold some kind significance and coherently lead to the plot's development, to contrast the randomness of real life events recorded in history. Michael Swaim, who wrote and performed spectacularly as "Mr. Zusu" (Zeus) in Olympus Inc., executed that law perfectly and weaved together a very smartly written comedy that audiences with prior knowledge of mythology would appreciate immensely and audiences who knew absolutely nothing about the world of the immortals could still laugh at and enjoy.

I guess the guys at the San Diego Asian Film Festival who claimed that UCSD had an awesome theater program (and were subsequently laughed at by the entire theater full of people) weren't kidding after all!