""Don't forget," the family's maid Sabina (Micaela Diamond) chirps at us as the show opens, just a hint of desperation in her voice, "we made it through the recession-pandemic-wildfire-oligarchy by the seat of our pants. One more crisis like that, and then where will we be?" Diamond speeds through the compound noun as if it's supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, and the moment pings with sly resonance, a little triangle-sting of wit."
"Wilder, whose play premiered in 1942 in the dark wake of the United States's entry into the Second World War, rendered the line as "We came through the Depression by the skin of our teeth! One more tight squeeze like that, and where will we be?" His is a wily, chaotic, satirical and sincere, temptingly unwieldy epic drama. Think you know him after alone? Thornton is wilder."
Ethan Lipton's The Seat of Our Pants is a musical adaptation of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, opening at the Public and arriving at Astor Place. The production adds new songs, dances, and adaptational zhuzhing while retaining Wilder's epic blend of satire, sincerity, and allegory. The Antrobus family embodies human survival amid repeated disasters, evoking Depression-era origins and modern crises like pandemic and political turmoil. Sabina's line about surviving 'recession-pandemic-wildfire-oligarchy' underscores contemporary resonance. Wilder's original mixes biblical symbolism, Greek muses, and absurd set pieces, including a woolly mammoth puppet.
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