Terming Wilder's drama a "morality play" designed to make audiences think about the consequences of their lives, Fleming gives the work a favorable review. He singles out such high points as a "high degree of suspense" and the play's theme of the "invincibility of the human spirit"—factors which make The Skin of Our Teeth "astonishingly successful" theatre.

It is by the skin of our teeth, the author very plausibly asserts, that the human race escapes the consequences of its own proclivities for self-destruction. He calls his morality play "a history of mankind in comic strip," and though the history is allusive and surrealist the strip is undeniably comic. Nothing, in fact, could be less ponderous than Mr. Thornton Wilder's approach to his weighty theme. It is nevertheless truly philosophical.

Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus represent Homo Sapiens down the ages. They have a son and a...