The Public Theater - Ethan Lipton’s “The Seat of Our Pants”

Thank-you.  

I've seen The Skin of Our Teeth a couple times over the years. It runs long as a play.

I'm seeing it 4 weeks from now, so I imagine it will tighten up by then.

If the band is loud I'll try to remember to bring earplugs.

Totally forgot it started previews last night. I love The Skin of Our Teeth, so I grabbed a rush ticket for $40 and got a great third row center seat tonight. Very much looking forward to this.

It's interesting that the Wilder estate has sanctioned this, after pulling the rights from the long in development Kander and Ebb version (which had some of their best late-era music, but to be fair was in development with various regional productions, maybe the estate just felt they had enough time to try to get it right.)

I largely thought this was wonderful. Ethan Lipton nails the sincerely strange and strangely sincere tone of Thornton Wilder’s play, with the added layer of musical theatre on top of the existing metatheatricality making the whole piece feel fresh. It’s far from perfect - it’s an oddball adaptation of an odd play - but, by opening, I think it’ll be in excellent shape.

Micaela Diamond, Ruthie Ann Miles, and Ally Bonino absolutely devour this show. This isn’t a slight to rest of the ensemble, they’re just given the best material to work with and they each have several memorable moments. You miss them when they’re not onstage. I don’t think I’ll forget Ruthie breaking down over her lost son, Micaela’s bizarre “Music and the Mirror” homage, or Ally’s fortune telling number for quite some time.

I’m ready for a cast recording immediately. Lipton’s score really runs the gamut - Micaela Diamond’s Sabina sounds like Fiona Apple morphed into Lola from Damn Yankees, while Damon Daunno alternates between his country warble and a dead ringer for Disturbed’s David Draimon, and Ruthie Ann Miles is straight out of Adam Guettel’s roster of tortured wives.

Agree with Melissa25 that there’s some glacial pacing that lets a bit of the air out of the tires in the third act, but it’s all worth it to get to that final moment. “We’re a Disaster” ties the evening up in a way that I can only liken to seeing the final moments of Sunday in the Park with George for the first time. It hit me harder than I was expecting, but I think this play does that to me every time I see it. It’s just that good a model to work off of.

Definitely highly recommend, and I’ll be looking forward to revisiting later in the run.

Updated On: 10/26/25 at 10:48 PM

I thought this was pretty dreadful. A shame because I love Lipton's work, and love the play. It's three torturous hours. Everybody on that stage is working very hard, but in support of a book and score that is not supporting them. Maybe I'll elaborate later, but now I'm just tired. 

I loved the dinosaur. 

The ushers told us that Act I is only 50 minutes and Act II is about 1:35. I don’t often see musicals as being bottom-heavy, especially by this much. Have there been other musicals like this?

(I’m seeing this tonight and will report back later.)

I…really don’t know what I just watched. I’m convinced everything on that stage was just something that felt like Stefon from SNL got really high and created an entire three hour metatheatrical special based on a really bad trip.

”This show has EVERYTHING! Dinosaurs, war, line dancing, a vaudeville number in mammal heads, and Tony nominee Micaela Diamond singing an 11 O’Clock number about ice cream.”

The pacing is absolutely TORTUOUS. That second/third act pairing was painful to sit through. They did not need to add a musical interlude while we all sat in the dark as stagehands changed the scenery. One of those “brief 5 minute pauses” would have sufficed and given us a chance for our brains to reset.

I think part of my issue is that I have no familiarity with the source material, but even at that, I still think the essential message I took from it was that there’s always another chance to restart life from a new approach, but by the end, my synapses were so fried that I kinda just sat mouth agape in abject disbelief looking like I had a stroke.At least HERE WE ARE had a basic throughline and a method to the madness. This was just incomprehensible.

The cast seemed game for all the shenanigans that went into this painful slog, and good for them, but I would only recommend this show only if I was feeling a sadistic need to torture my worst enemy.

I was also there tonight, and I had been excited since I loved the LCT revival of Skin of Our Teeth and also thought Ethan Lipton's We Are Your Robots was great, and I pretty much adored this whole show.  I'm no Skin of Our Teeth scholar, but from what I saw at Lincoln Center, this matches the tone pretty well and makes some clever expansions.  The third act of the play which kind of lost the plot for me was handled with a bit of a tighter focus here, and I found it more digestible. The songs are tuneful (a mix of jazz and folk, along with a few other genres) and for the most part seem well-placed, though there's a monologue Mr. Antrobus gives in the third act that I thought could've been musicalized.

I agree the pacing was a little off at times.  Act 1 felt pretty tight and did a good job of setting up the family dynamics while also balancing the impending disaster, but I don't know why acts 2 and 3 of the play were combined into the same one in this, since there's a 5 minute or so musical interlude where we just watch the stagehands change the set (it also made me wonder if there wasn't a quicker way to do the set change or to just simplify the act 2 set.  I think there should at least be a pause between acts 2 and 3, but I think a pause between 1 and 2 and then a full intermission between 2 and 3 would be a better way to do it (which is the way LCT did the play), since act 1 sets up a lot of crazy things, but the stark difference and upheaval in act 2 probably requires more time to wrap your mind around and process just what the show is.  I assume the way it is the way it's done is due to the set requirements, but like I said, I spent most of that musical interlude thinking of ways the set could be more efficiently utilized for the turnover, which I don't think is necessarily what you want your audience to be thinking.  For the most part I think acts 2 and 3 individually didn't drag too much, though there are things that could be trimmed in each, but the combination of them is what makes it feel a bit like a slog to get to the end.

Though I want to reiterate that I really did enjoy the show.  All the actors are wonderfully cast, with Ruthie Ann Miles and Micaela Diamond being standouts, as others have mentioned.  But also a special shout out to Andy Grotelulueschen as the announcer who really managed to capture the dry but somewhat off-kilter spirit of the show to deliver the openings for each act.

I was seated on the "back side" of the stage, and while I didn't have any issues, I'd say most of the show is more designed to be seen from the front side.  Actors seem to cheat out in that direction more, and it didn't quite feel even between the two sides.  There were some sound balance issues, though I'm not sure if that was specific to this side, but Damon Daunno's mic in particular didn't seem to capture his singing all that well (though it's also still previews so hopefully that gets fixed).  The last row on the back side has free-standing chairs rather than the usual theater seats, for people that might prefer that.

I'm very curious to see this again later in the run to see if they change anything in previews (there was a reprise in the song list that might've been cut already, but I also could've just missed it)

Honestly, the only time I truly laughed was in the final act:

RippedMan said: "Could this move uptown? Pretty dry season for new musicals."

This would be a good fit in Circle in the Square, but it’s a pretty small, quirky show - despite its narrative expansiveness - and I don’t think it would fare well in a traditional space. That said, as much as I loved it, I can see this being divisive with critics, so I think the prospects of a transfer aren’t super high.

RippedMan said: "Could this move uptown? Pretty dry season for new musicals."

I wish, but I doubt it unless another nonprofit wants to take it on. The LCT revival was a massive flop, so what producer would want to take on a musical version? 

I will also say that Quizking posted their same post on Reddit and received a lot more concurring opinions than they did here. R/Broadway has its own type of niche theatre people, I’m not sure it’s SOOO much more representative of the broader audience than here. But, it probably is a bit more representative and if they don’t like it, I have a hard time imagining a commercial general audience liking it. 

quizking101 said: "I…really don’t know what I just watched. I’m convinced everything on that stage was just something that felt like Stefon from SNL got really high and created an entire three hour metatheatrical special based on a really bad trip.

”This show has EVERYTHING! Dinosaurs, war, line dancing, a vaudeville numberin mammal heads, and Tony nominee Micaela Diamond singing an 11 O’Clock number about ice cream.”

The pacing is absolutely TORTUOUS. That second/third act pairing was painful to sit through. They did not need to add a musical interlude while we all sat in the dark as stagehands changed the scenery. One of those “brief 5 minute pauses” would have sufficed and given us a chance for our brains to reset.

I think part of my issue is that I have no familiarity with the source material, but even at that, I still think the essential message I took from it was that there’s always another chance to restart life from a new approach, but by the end, my synapses were so fried that I kinda just sat mouth agape in abject disbelief looking like I had a stroke.At least HERE WE ARE had a basic throughline and a method to the madness. This was just incomprehensible.

The cast seemed game for all the shenanigans that went into this painful slog, and good for them, but I would only recommend this show only if I was feeling a sadistic need to torture my worst enemy."

I felt the same as you did. I sat through this long slog and kept looking at my watch as three hours passed bye ever so slow.