By The Skin of Our Teeth – Smock Alley Theatre – Dublin
Writer and Director: William Dunleavy
What happens after it’s all over?
The actors are already on stage as the audience files in. The dark stage is covered in chairs that have been upturned, making it difficult to navigate path from one side of the theatre to another. It looks like a disaster scene. There are seven people on stage; six men and one woman. They are all wearing white tops that are ripped and stained with black trousers. One person is lying like a hospital patient at the back. The rest of the actors look like they are hiding or have taken shelter where they have fallen. No one speaks or moves. The tableau is broken when a man wearing a damaged white boiler suit rushes onto the stage and wakes up one of the men.
They are in some post – apocalyptic world. It soon emerges that they all know each other. They had all been imprisoned for violent, and in some cases strange, crimes, and yet it was these prisoners that survived the devastation. By The Skin of Our Teeth is surprisingly funny for a dystopian play. William Dunleavy’s script is witty and original, peppered with humour and insights into the human condition. There is nowhere else in Dublin where one will be able to hear jokes about cannibalism and the benefits of surviving the apocalypse on a cold winter night.
By The Skin of Our Teeth has been presented as a part of the Smock Alley Scene and Heard Festival 2017 which gives new writing to opportunity to get feedback so that a play can continue to develop. By The Skin of Our Teeth is an excellent demonstration of this ethos. With a little more work and a longer running time has the potential to turn into a powerful dark comedy. The final scene is quite moving as it makes the audience question themselves and their preconceptions. In this new world they can start over. Will they now have the chance to be seen as just people rather than criminals?
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