A fine revival …

… About Last Night | Thornton Wilder tends the fire.

The Antrobuses, on whom the action is centered, appear to be Wilder’s version of a middle-class sitcom-type family (husband, housewife, two cute kids and a sexy maid). Within a few minutes, though, we learn that they’re all 5,000 years old and that the the play begins in the Ice Age, after which we move forward in time with vertiginous speed, first to the Great Flood and then to World War II. What we have here, in short, is a parable, a symbolic tale of how humankind copes with disaster. But “The Skin of Our Teeth” is also a screwball tragedy, one in which events of the gravest import are portrayed with a farce-flavored lightness of touch.