Thornton Wilder believed that his play “The Skin of Our Teeth,” a comic tragedy about human resilience in the face of encroaching cataclysm, “mostly comes alive under conditions of crisis.” That’s also how it germinated in his mind, as the United States edged closer to entering World War II. By the time the show premiered in 1942, Wilder had joined the Army, despite being 45 and famous, because: All hands on deck.
So it’s probably not a great sign of social health that a clutch of prominent New York stages has revisited the work in recent years — first Theater for a New Audience, with Arin Arbus’s 2017 production, then Lincoln Center Theater, where Lileana Blain-Cruz took it back to Broadway in 2022. Now the Public Theater is proving Wilder’s point afresh as Leigh Silverman directs Ethan Lipton’s thoughtful, inventive, maybe-not-yet-finished new musical adaptation, “The Seat of Our Pants,” starring a dream-team cast.
Amid the cyclone of stress that is our era, I defy you to find a more healing theatrical balm than this musical’s buoyant and funny, dark and devastating first act — set in prehistoric suburban New Jersey, where the Antrobus family and their maid, Sabina, are in the path of a wall of ice that threatens to destroy them. In Wilder’s original, they have just come through the Depression. Here, their situation is updated; they might even be a little ahead of us.
“Don’t forget,” Sabina (Micaela Diamond) says in screwball cadence, “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?”
That freaked-out laugh line brings the comfort of grim humor, while the show’s opening number, “The World Is Ending” — sung by the cozy Announcer (Andy Grotelueschen) — has a good-time American cheer. (The orchestra, with its invaluable brass, banjo and bass, is directed by Nathan Koci.)
“Don’t lose your head,” the Announcer counsels, tunefully. “For as long as it’s ending, the world hasn’t ended yet.”
But Mrs. Antrobus (Ruthie Ann Miles), a mother, wife and impeccable homemaker; Mr. Antrobus (Shuler Hensley), a father, husband and genius inventor; and their children, the violent Henry (Damon Daunno) and the bookish Gladys (Amina Faye), are forever in danger of being wiped out: by an ice age in the first act, by a great flood in the second, by war in the third — and by their own foibles, too. (Shout-out to the spectacular thunder in the second act; sound design is by Drew Levy.)
The Antrobuses and Sabina are archetypes, existing down through the millenniums, and Wilder meant to tell their story dryly. When he mentioned the play to Gertrude Stein in a letter, he said he had “tried to write a tragedy without tears,” though “a few Wilder tears got in” anyway. Yet in a musical, emotional pressure points are the portals to song. Detecting those is part of the challenge of adapting this somewhat unwieldy, semi-experimental play — a task that the formidable team of John Kander and Fred Ebb once tried, unsuccessfully.
“The Seat of Our Pants” is largely faithful to Wilder, metatheatrical digressions and all, but unafraid of passion and tears. This production’s anchor is the indelible Miles, whose Mrs. Antrobus is steely, sharp, comic and uncommonly warm. A fact of life for the Antrobuses is the loss of their son Abel, which Wilder acknowledges. But Lipton, Silverman and particularly Miles, in a brief and shattering Act I moment, give it the depth of grief that it deserves. (Lighting, by Lap Chi Chu, is instrumental there.)
The musical’s first act is stunningly close to perfect, the other two less fully accomplished. The second is listless until the Fortune Teller (a fantastic Ally Bonino) livens it up with her song of doomish predictions, followed by an exhilarating punk number for Henry, raging in his baby blue stripes; a smart seduction duet for Sabina and Mr. Antrobus; and Gladys’s furious rejection of him for betraying their family. (Costumes are by Kaye Voyce.)
The third act simply gets too long, the bagginess sapping potency from the scenario: Peace has broken out. It’s time to start rebuilding the world, and figuring out how to achieve that with the determinedly noxious, intractably alienated Henry still in it.
Such are the cycles of human existence. As the title of the defiantly hopeful closing number has it, “We’re a Disaster.”
Still, the company sings: “We start anew. It’s what we do.”
The Seat of Our Pants
Through Dec. 7 at the Public Theater, Manhattan; publictheater.org. Running time: 2 hours 35 minutes.
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