“The Seat of Our Pants” Invokes Music to Decipher Eons of Chaos—at The Public
Michael Lepore, Micaela Diamond, Ruthie Ann Miles, Geena Quintos, and David Ryan Smith. Photos by Joan Marcus
Ethan Lipton Adapts “The Skin of Our Teeth” with US in Mind
by Mary Cushman (with Maude Meisel)
I remind my preschoolers, when we’re reading a book about dinosaurs, that “there were no people back then.” Not so in “The Seat of Our Pants,” where an American family lets a dinosaur and a mammoth (both adorable) into their living room to get out of the cold and be treated as pets. This new show at the Public Theater in NYC, is a musical based on Thornton Wilder’s 1942 Pulitzer Prize-winning play “The Skin of Our Teeth.”
Both the original play and this musical adaptation by Ethan Lipton follow the Antrobus family and their melodramatic maid, Sabina, through the Ice Age, the biblical Great Flood, and the end of a massive war—all while living a traditional suburban life in (fictional) Excelsior, NJ. It sounds bizarre, and it is.
Some characters have known each other for thousands of years. As Sabina, Micaela Diamond often breaks the fourth wall, complaining early on that “I don’t understand a word of this play.” Diamond is wonderful in the role. Sabina is less a femme fatale than a desperate young fantasist who wants fame and fortune, but she can be satisfied with ice cream and a ticket to the movies.
Ruthie Ann Miles, Shuler Hensley, and the company of “The Seat of Our Pants”
The cast is terrific under Leigh Silverman’s direction. Ruthie Ann Miles portrays Mrs. Antrobus with quiet power; she looks unruffled even as her world goes through one existential crisis after another. Shuler Hensley is a wonderfully ordinary Mr. Antrobus, the kind of man who might make dad jokes, despite being brilliant enough to invent the alphabet and the wheel. (I did say the plot is bizarre.) The actors playing the Antrobus children, the Announcer, the Telegram Boy, and the Fortune Teller stand out—and the Ensemble is marvelous as well.
The stage design is folksy and sometimes playful, with a few rows of audience seated at the back of the stage, and a single row of musicians on either side. In Act I, the musicians wear vests that match the colorful wallpaper of the Antrobus’ house. In Act II, they switch to short red and gold vests for the Atlantic City convention celebrating “The Ancient and Honorable Order of Mammals, Subdivision Human.” The animal delegates cheerily sing, “Everyone Loves to Go to Conventions” in cheesy red and gold outfits topped by majestic animal heads. For post-war Act III, the musicians pare down to drab shirts.
Shuler Hensley and Micaela Diamond
An earlier song, “Stuff It Down Inside,” is beautifully sung and sounds like a lullaby, despite its tense and anxious lyrics about repressing your fears and worries to hide them from your family. The show’s finale, “We’re a Disaster,” employs choreography that starts with each cast member making individualized jerky movements, releasing their anger, tension, and fear. Gradually they switch to unison dance moves, and it seems life can go on if they face their struggles together.
This is a production that both honors Wilder’s play and adds or replaces material to make it resonate for us now—more comic in some places and more sobering in others. Sabina, in her long opening address to us, originally ends with “we made it through the depression by the skin of our teeth.” But here “the depression” is replaced by a lengthy (and speedy) list that includes the pandemic and our more recent woes.
Amina Faye, Ruthie Ann Miles, and Damon Daunno
In Act II, a pelican, one of the convention delegates, arrives late, splotched with a mysterious black substance that we recognize as oil. She is later silently carried across the stage, limp in another delegate’s arms.
In Act III, Lipton takes out a somewhat dated section about food poisoning and replaces it with a fight about union rights and inequality between the play’s stars and its supporting actors. Throughout there are references to the importance of books and the arts—key to the amazing resilience of human beings—as irrepressible and noble as they are pig-headed and destructive.
In Act I, as the glaciers are approaching and it’s freezing inside, Mrs. Antrobus receives a telegram from her husband that advises, “Just keep them [their children] warm. Burn everything except Shakespeare.” How fitting to hear those lines in a production at the Public Theater, which started its wonderful history as the New York Shakespeare Festival.
“The Seat of Our Pants” has been in the works for ten years, and we are lucky that it bursts on the scene now. In the midst of our current climate crisis, wars, and chaotic selfishness, the new musical shows that all of humanity must work together to save ourselves—and the planet—from destruction. Will we survive by “the skin of our teeth,” one more time?
Bill Buell, Andy Grotelueschen, and the company of “The Seat of Our Pants”
“The Seat of Our Pants” –directed by Leigh Silverman, based upon the play “The Skin of Our Teeth,” by Thornton Wilder; adaptation, music, & lyrics by Ethan Lipton; choreography by Sunny Min-Sook Hitt, at The Public Theater, New York City.
Info: publictheater.org – to December 7, 2025.
Cast: Ben Beckley (Ensemble), Ally Bonino (Fortune Teller), Bill Buell (Turkey/Ensemble), Damon Daunno (Henry Antrobus), Micaela Diamond (Sabina), Amina Faye (Gladys Antrobus), Andy Grotelueschen (Announcer/Ensemble), Shuler Hensley (Mr. Antrobus), Allison Ann Kelly (Ensemble/Musician), Michael Lepore (Telegram Boy/Ensemble), Nat Lopez (Ensemble), Ruthie Ann Miles (Mrs. Antrobus), Geena Quintos (Mammoth/Ensemble), David Ryan Smith (Ensemble), and Ruth E. Sternberg (Mr. Fitzpatrick).