It takes a truly oddball sensibility to try to make a musical out of Thornton Wilder’s Finnegan’s Wake-inspired three-act dramedy The Skin of Our Teeth. Betty Comden, Adolph Green, Leonard Bernstein, and Jerome Robbins abandoned one attempt in the 1960s. More recently, John Kander, Frank Ebb, and Joseph Stein took a stab at an adaptation — which never made it to New York. Now Ethan Lipton, a playwright, songwriter, and denizen of the downtown theater scene known for offbeat music-infused projects like We Are Your Robots, has made his own attempt.
The Seat of Our Pants, which opened Thursday at the Public Theater, embraces the abstraction as well as the fourth-wall-breaking absurdities of Wilder’s 1942 original — an unconventional play that follows a “typical” New Jersey family named Antrobus who are also archetypes for biblical characters as they grapple with war, temptation, and the possibly imminent threat of the world ending. Sabina, the family’s domestic servant and a working-class everywoman who repeatedly addresses the audience, sums up the show’s curious structure up top. “I hate this show and every line in it. I don’t understand a word of it anyway — all about the troubles of the human race? Now there’s a subject for you,” she says. “Besides the author hasn’t decided whether it’s set back in the caves or in New Jersey today. And now some other guy’s added songs. Songs! Because that’s what it was missing.”
Michaela Diamond is delightful as Sabina, delivering her lines and her tunes with a forthrightness and clear tone that puts us at ease even as we encounter puzzling things like a human-size dinosaur and mastodon who huddle inside the Antrobus home as an extinction-level wall of ice approaches. Another standout is Ruthie Ann Miles as Mrs. Antrobus, a very ’40s style domestic goddess who blindly defends her brood despite mounting evidence that her son, born Cain and now named Henry (Damon Daunno), has not reformed from his violent past. She nails one of the show’s best songs, an ode to swallowing your anxieties called “Stuff It Down Inside” whose lyrics include: “Keep it from your children / Keep it from your bride / You could share it with them / But there’s a reason God gave us pride / So all those awful feelings / Could have a place to hide.” Seldom has sublimating your true feelings sounded so appealing.
Ally Bonino is delightful in a number of roles, particularly the Atlantic City Fortune Teller in the second act who singles out audience members with alarming predictions that range from “shin splints” to “You’re going to have 18 grandkids and they’re all going to move in with you.” Shuler Hensley is solid as Mr. Antrobus, a patriarchal figurehead who leads the family unit, claims patent rights on such human innovations as the wheel and the multiplication tables, and serves as all-purpose father figure as Wilder’s tour through Genesis shifts from the story of Adam to Noah and the flood.
Lipton’s score, performed by an 11-piece band, is an eclectic mix of styles that suggest everything from patter songs to jazzy standards to theatrical ballads. There are too many of them, and the show itself could use tightening — particularly in the post-intermission stretch that includes the second and third acts of the original. Leigh Silverman’s production also tends to drag with the frequent and extensive changes to the scenery on Lee Jellinek’s set, which frames a square stage area with rows of audience members on either side. Under Drew Levy’s sound design, the vocals sometimes get drowned out by the instrumentalists, who are also lined up on either side of the stage.
Still, there’s a lot to admire here. Lipton remains remarkably faithful to Wilder’s original text and leans into its groundbreaking meta qualities to update and comment on elements that don’t hold up as well through a 21st-century lens. For instance, Sabina (or is Diamond?) objects to her character trying to seduce Mr. Antrobus to get ahead. (“It’s just a very oldy-timey takey on a certain archetype and every time I do the scene it fills me with a little bit of rage,” she sings.) Then it’s the ensemble members who complain about being reduced to the background in a show that’s supposedly about the fate of all humanity.
By addressing the flaws of Wilder’s text, Lipton cunningly underscores all the aspects of the show that still speak to us today. He does so while injecting 80-year-old material with references that are both contemporary and somehow timeless — hacky sack, the smell of brisket, the joys of eating ice cream. And utterly true to the cockeyed sensibility of the original. The Seat of Our Pants is not for everyone, but fans of Wilder will rejoice at this fresh take on a genuine classic. ★★★★☆
THE SEAT OF OUR PANTS
Public Theater, Off Broadway
Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes (with 1 intermission)
Tickets on sale through December 7 for $125
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