The Seat of Our Pants Off-Broadway Reviews

It’s been over three years since Lincoln Center’s ambitious and winning revival of Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play of apocalypse-meets-absurdity The Skin of Our Teeth, which originally premiered on Broadway—mid-World War II—in 1942. Now the Public Theater is mounting Ethan Lipton’s knockout-excellent original musical adaptation, The Seat of Our Pants. The show, just shy of three hours long (booking to Dec. 7), is crisply directed (by Leigh Silverman), exquisitely performed by a starry, award-garlanded cast, and one of New York’s musical highlights of the year, on or off-Broadway.

The cast is an embarrassment of riches, with Shuler Hensley and Ruthie Ann Miles as Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus, Damon Daunno and Amina Faye as their children, and Micaela Diamond as Sabina, the family maid. Not to mention a whole ensemble of incredible vocalists who also playfully portray animals; the woolly mammoth and dinosaur are especially great.

Last weekend I witnessed the premiere of The Seat of Our Pants at The Public Theater, and found the show to be pretty much a dud both as a musical and a production, only sporadically brightened by lively performances. This bums me out so much that it’s difficult to detail much about the misguided production that opened on Thursday, so let’s be brief before salty tears wreck my keyboard.