Word: antrobus
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
After an Ice-Age news bulletin that announces the sighting of a sunrise, we enter the scene with an introduction from Sabina (Kristin Gasser), who services the Antrobus family of Excelsior, New Jersey. As the too-big-for-her-britches and too-bright-for-her-job housekeeper warns us, this play makes no sense. "It can't even decide if we're living in caves or in New Jersey," she declares. Throughout the play, Sabina, portrayed with superb wit and giddiness by Gasser, continues to step outside of the drama and remind us that this is only a play...
...Antrobus family itself ought to be the ordinary nuclear unit except that Mrs. Antrobus (Rebecca Clark) has to remind Sabina to milk the pet mammoth, son Henry (Remo Airaldi) is 4000 years old and used to be called Cain, and Mr. Antrobus (Eric Oleson) comes home at night with his prototypical model for the wheel. But even if Henry did, eons ago, kill his brother Abel, and even if Sabina does stumble around the house threatening to give her two-weeks notice, throughout the first act the Antrobus family is united with the remaining inhabitants of the world to save...
...When things are easy, self-interest consumes us until we have too many love affairs or build too many nuclear weapons, and things get tough again. The second-act party turns into the Great Deluge and by the time we're in the third act, war has left the Antrobus home a fortified fallout shelter...
...cyclical nature of it all is even starting to nag at Mr. Antrobus' indefatigable fortitude. In the play's most serious moment, as the family tries to reestablish its happy home, Mr. Antrobus warns his wife, "You and I must never forget those resolves in peacetime that were so clear to us in times...