As someone who missed this hit production when it was first staged by Renaissance Theaterworks 10 years ago, this reviewer is pleased to have the chance to see Skin Tightthe second time around. The play is being staged with the same two actors who portray the lovers (Leah Dutchin and Braden Moran), also accompanied by actor Eamonn O’Neill. The show’s original director, Laura Gordon, also was tapped for the current production.
Restaging a play is a tricky thing. Audiences who saw Skin Tight the first time around want to experience it in exactly the same way (which is impossible, since people undergo many changes in a decade). Those who haven’t seen it come to the production with extremely high expectations. This play must be fabulous; otherwise, why else would a theater company restage it?
Thankfully, this production of Skin Tight lives up to anyone’s expectations. The play, set in New Zealand, creates a poetic arc of two people’s lives, from the time they first meet in elementary school through early courtship, marriage, child-raising, farming and inevitably, physical decline and death.
Written in 1998, Skin Tight appeared Off-Broadway in 2012 at the 59E59 Theater as a production of the One Year Lease Theater Company. It starred New Zealand actress Sarah-Jane Casey (TV’s “Law & Order”) and Peter Saide (TV’s “Huckabee”). Last year, the play was produced in Chicago.
Much of the story is based on movement. The partners, Tom and Elizabeth, begin the play with a fierce wrestling match held inside a barn. The wrestling becomes play, and eventually foreplay, as the lovers intertwine their arms, legs and lips. “You know me too well,” Tom says.
To prove the point, Elizabeth later clamps her teeth on the end of Tom’s pocketknife. The fun and games quickly turn dangerous as Elizabeth bobs and weaves, the knife still in her throat. Talk about an attention-getting device! Once they tire of these games, the two characters remain intimately connected while doing personal tasks. She shaves him with the pocketknife, and he washes her hair in an inexplicably placed white porcelain bathtub.
While shaving and washing, they share details of their lives. They speak of the land, the mountains and especially of their farm, which Tom inherited from his parents. Elizabeth, born on “the wrong side of the tracks,” as it were, was not seen as an ideal match by Tom’s parents. Tom admits that their constant refrain – “she only wants you for your farm” – wasn’t easily erased from his memory. Over time, however, the inner conflict is resolved.
The intimate space of the Studio Theater is ideally suited for this intense, intimate look at life. The couple’s onstage nudity, which is done tastefully and silently near the play’s end, almost signals the rebirth of these characters as they come nearly full circle through the cycle of life.
It takes awhile for the audience to figure out that Skin Tight is a memory play. It’s a non-linear look at their lives, as seen through Tom’s memory. Although the piece touches on many familiar subjects, some of them very funny, one of the most memorable sequences involves their observations about a war. Elizabeth recalls with irony how she and the other townsfolk cheered and waved as their “boys” went off to fight in a far-away place. They had no idea of war’s harsh realities, she said. Not long afterwards, she recalls that telegrams started arriving from the military. They notified parents of their son’s death. Elizabeth recalls that one mother received several of these dreaded telegrams. “The war took all her sons,” Elizabeth recalls. “I remember thinking, ‘why couldn’t they have left her with at least one?’”
When Tom returns from war looking basically the same as when he left, Elizabeth almost can’t believe her good fortune. But all isn’t as placid as it seems. She recounts his nightmares, his shrieks, with Tom huddled in her lap. “I wondered whether I’d ever get you back,” she says.
Part of the charm of Gary Henderson’s play is that not every story is told to its conclusion. Tom and Elizabeth, who talk of the events in their own lives, it is unnecessary. They know how the story turns out. Under Laura Gordon’s direction, the play starts off as a battle, then segues into a dance. Credit goes to choreographer Marie Gillespie, with assistance by Ryan Schalbach, for making such memorable images, which are at least as important as the dialogue. The play also benefits from a deceptively simple set design and projections by Jason Fassl. Through the eyes of Elizabeth and Tom, the audience begins to “see” the mountains and colors of the sky, which appear on and in between the old barn’s wooden planks. It’s nicely done, without calling too much attention to itself.
One guesses that the 10 years between productions has created a richer connection between Leah Dutchin and Braden Moran as they create the characters of Elizabeth and Tom. At least they’ve had 10 years of living to add to their acting repertoire. This production of Skin Tight must certainly benefit from such enhanced understanding.
