From impending ice walls to ruinous war, “The Skin of Our Teeth” shows one prehistoric family’s fight to survive various world-ending disasters that still permeate our lives today.

The show, presented by the University of Minnesota’s B.A. Theatre Arts program, brought Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play to Rarig Center. The opening performance on Nov. 14 had the audience laughing, gasping and questioning what it means to destroy and rebuild. It runs until Sunday.

The Antrobus family and their maid are the stars of the show. 

Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus, played by Dominique Drake and Luciana Stich, shepherd their children, Gladys and Henry, played by Stella Wright and Gage Canavan, through three era-defining disasters. 

In the first act, the world’s climate teeters on an ice age as a wall of ice moves toward the Antrobus’ house. A devastating flood that harkens back to the biblical tale of Noah’s Ark captures the second act. The third act exposes the aftermath of a devastating war.

While the catastrophes the family faces span from the age of mammoths and dinosaurs — both of which appear in the show in puppet form — to war with a 20th-century tint, the costuming and set create a visual that registers as relatively modern.

The set changes for each act. It starts as the family’s house in Excelsior, New Jersey, full of plush furniture and a fireplace, then rotates 180 degrees to reveal the boardwalk of Atlantic City, New Jersey, in Act 2. It returns to the family’s home for Act 3, but this time the chairs are worn, the wallpaper is ripped and everything lacks the life and love that filled it before.

The Stoll Thrust Theatre, where the production was held, pushed the set into the audience, creating an intimate relationship between actors on stage and viewers who can see them from three sides.

Actors moved through the aisles during the production, running on stage from the entrance and stomping off to rooms out of view.

The Antrobus family maid, Sabina, played by Sky Gassman, accompanies the family throughout. She sets the tone of each act, first appearing as a peppy yet critical maid, then a beauty competition-winning seductress, before finally pivoting to being a determined war survivor.

Sabina breaks the fourth wall throughout the production. At times, this is the character’s opinion shining through: “I hate this play,” she exclaims in the first act. But in other moments, she’s translating the events of the play into real-life equivalencies:

“I see what this part of the play means now,” she tells the audience when Mr. Antrobus invites freezing stragglers into his house to escape the ice wall in Act 1. “It means refugees!” 

The fourth wall breaking is one of this production’s metatheatrical devices. This idea, which is commonly called “a play within a play,” helps blur the line between theater and reality.

Other technical choices also contribute to this goal.

The first act uses a laugh track. It tells the audience where to laugh, but it also highlights when things take a turn into seriousness. Its absence is as heavily felt as its presence.

Throughout the production, an actor playing a stage manager runs on stage and reminds Sabina to stay in character and follow her lines. This culminates in Act 3 when the stage manager slinks in front of the audience to announce that multiple actors are sick and can’t perform. 

They turn the house lights on as the stage manager coaches actors pretending to be ushers, costume designers and other tech crew members on the lines they have to cover.

With harsh house lights on, the audience can see the entire stage, all the actors and one another. After the first two acts leading up to this moment, it forces reflection and honesty as the toned lights fall away.

“The Skin of Our Teeth” is a long show, running for over two and a half hours, but its message warrants attention.

Wilder wrote this play in 1942, yet the disasters we see could very well appear on the news today. How can we confront them? How do we move past them?

The play offers a solution: remember the past and work together to reach the future. The Antrobus family survives each of these calamities by looking out for one another, even when they’d much rather be fighting than embracing.

“Every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for,” Mr. Antrobus reminds audiences.