Since its premiere, The Skin of Our Teeth has maintained a solid critical reputation, earning consistent critical acclaim and winning over new generations of Americans with its frequent revivals.

The original Broadway production, which opened on November 18,1942, prompted reviewers like the New York Daily Telegraph's George Freedley to comment both that "Wilder certainly has the most vivid imagination in the theater today," and that the play is "a perfect piece of theater." Although a few critics complained that the work lacked substance and that Wilder's anti-illusion staging devices were awkward, such voices were distinctly in the minority.

The play did generate some controversy when two authors, Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson, published an article in the Saturday Review of Literature claiming that Wilder had plagiarized James Joyce's novel Finnegan 's Wake (1939). Campbell and Robinson carefully pointed out the similarities in plot, theme, and presentation between...