It was good to see the dinosaur and woolly mammoth in the Antrobus family’s mid-20th century suburban New Jersey living room again. The creatures are not really threatening—just happy to be there, like their human owners who have implausibly survived thousands of years of war, political upheaval, and environmental catastrophe.

It’s been over three years since Lincoln Center’s ambitious and winning revival of Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play of apocalypse-meets-absurdity The Skin of Our Teeth, which originally premiered on Broadway—mid-World War II—in 1942. Now the Public Theater is mounting Ethan Lipton’s knockout-excellent original musical adaptation, The Seat of Our Pants.

The show, just shy of three hours long (booking to Dec. 7), is crisply directed (by Leigh Silverman)

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