The Seat of Our Pants @ The Public Theater

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The Play: The Seat of Our Pants; a musical version of  Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth” that heightens the absurdism and meta-theatricality of the 1943 Pulitzer winner, whose allegorical narrative about a family surviving calamities ranging from the Ice Age right up to the present time is frequently interrupted by direct addresses to the audience and the actions of a fictional stage manager who tries to get the actors to behave

Adaptation, Music and Lyrics by:  Ethan Lipton           Directed by: Leigh Silverman

One good thing: Lipton’s score is filled with tunes that are jaunty and occasionally moving and Silverman has assembled an all-star cast that is stacked with folks—Damon Daunno, Micaela Diamond, Andry Grotelueschen, Shuler Hensley and Ruthie Ann Miles—who know how to put on a good show; plus there are puppets

One not-so-great thing: The production is performed runway style, which not only means that one side of the audience is cheated as the actors play to the other but that the necessary scene changes are awkward, particularly in the second half of the show that squishes together the original’s second and third acts 

 

 


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