Wir sind noch einmal davongekommen

Yes, unfortunately, the friendly dinosaur and the little mammoth don’t survive Act 1—it gets too cold for them. But the Antrobus family—father, mother, and two children—proves to be all the more resilient. Whether it’s a global economic crisis or an ice age, a flood or a seven-year war that devastates everything, we see them resurface every time, pull themselves together, and start over. “Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus! They’ve got all sorts of plans in mind and are as optimistic as they were on day one”—at least according to their housekeeper, Sabina. Thornton Wilder’s satirical, surreal comedy of humanity was written in 1942, in the midst of World War II, and has become a modern classic. Wilder cheerfully mixes up historical eras—the Ice Age catches the Antrobus family in their home with a garden in a small town in New Jersey—skillfully jumps from the absurd to the bitterly serious and back again, and playfully subverts theatrical conventions. A lighthearted warning to finally learn from history. After all, it’s not just the polar bears who are starting to feel the heat.