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Off-Broadway Musical Review—“The Seat of Our Pants” at the Public Theater

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Thursday, 20 November 2025 21:01; Written by Kevin Filipski

The Seat of Our Pants

Adaptation, music, and lyrics by Ethan Lipton; based on the play The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder

Choreography by Sunny Min-Sook Hitt; directed by Leigh Silverman

Performances through December 7, 2025

Public Theater, New York, NY

publictheater.org

Shuler Hensley and Micaela Diamond in The Seat of Our Pants (photo: Joan Marcus)

Making Thornton Wilder’s play The Skin of Our Teeth literally sing is not an original concept: the last time it was done here, Off-Broadway in 2017, director Arin Arbus interpolated songs by César Alvarez into the high-concept structure of Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning creation, which takes a tongue-in-cheek but also deadly serious look at the Antrobus family from New Jersey (Antrobus means, not surprisingly, “human being” in Greek), whose 5,000-year existence includes a new ice age, a Biblical flood and an end-times world war in each of its three acts. (Wilder wrote it in 1942 during World War II, for context.)

The Skin of Our Teeth is a structural monstrosity—actors address the audience out of character, stagehands join in on the action, and a dinosaur and a mammoth have speaking parts, to name just a few—so adding songs would seem just another formal conceit that mirrors Wilder’s. The playwright heavily borrowed from James Joyce’s last novel, the punning classic Finnegans Wake—another formal experiment that has challenged readers and scholars for decades—to create the indestructible family that lives through both natural and man-made disasters.

Ethan Lipton—who adapted the play and wrote the music and lyrics of this latest incarnation, retitled The Seat of Our Pants—has kept most of Wilder’s conceits, so when the Antrobus’ maid, Sabina (who becomes a beauty pageant winner stealing the father away from his family in the second act before reverting back to their maid Sabina in act three) addresses the audience at the beginning, the effect is humorous if bemusing. (Wilder shrewdly put dialogue in Sabina’s mouth that would shut down criticism about what he is trying to do with his play.)

Lipton is better at adapting than writing songs, which, with a couple exceptions, don’t deepen the play’s metaphorical, allegorical or literary conceits but instead regurgitate what Wilder’s alternately pointed and ponderous writing has already covered. The Skin of Our Teeth is a long, exhausting evening of theater—and The Seat of Our Pants, also long, is even more exhausting.

Luckily, the always resourceful director Leigh Silverman stages these seemingly random scenes of a family adrift in a world that’s at war with itself with an unerring sense of the theatrical and the metatheatrical. With choreographer Sunny Min-Sook Hitt, Silverman makes movement more telling than Lipton’s songs or even Wilder’s words. On Lee Jellinek’s cleverly pliable unit set—illuminated by Lap Chi Chu’s canny lighting design and Kaye Voyce’s colorful costumes—Silverman creates a world in which the Antrobus clan, on the precipice of extinction, manages to survive the worst of both nature and their fellow humans.

The large cast tackles these brazenly surrealistic characters with aplomb. Shuler Hensley’s Mr. Antrobus is charming in his dumbness, someone who knows men will always lead however unqualified they are. Damon Daunno, as son Henry, is remarkably adept at aping his father’s brainlessness while Amina Faye, as daughter Gladys, effectively embodies a shrewdness her father and brother will never know. Ruthie Anne Miles, as Mrs. Antrobus, sings beautifully (no surprise) and finds an uncomfortably devastating emotional core, especially in a brief scene when she screams in mortal pain over her dead infant son.

Then there’s the Sabina of Micaela Diamond, a stage natural who, through a miraculous blend of charm, singing chops and comedic smarts, holds this unwieldy show together.

November '25 Digital Week II

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 19 November 2025 15:38; Written by Kevin Filipski

Streaming Releases of the Week

Heaven

(Lightyear)

With the untimely death of Diane Keaton, there was discussion about her legendary screen career, from her indelible collaborations with Woody Allen to her powerful performances in Reds and Shoot the Moon, among others.

But Keaton was also an idiosyncratic filmmaker, and her first feature—this weirdly beguiling 1987 documentary—showed off her singular style in ways that were both affecting and head-shaking. This 75-minute exploration rounds up interview snippets with people who discuss their idea of an afterlife alongside dozens of carefully chosen clips from a wide array of movies including Metropolis and A Matter of Life and Death to create something uniquely, lightheartedly Keatonesque.

Sex Diva

(Breaking Glass Pictures)

Writer-director Giulia Louise Steigerwalt smartly chronicles the fascinating career of Italian pornographer Riccardo Schicchi, who broke through in the ‘90s, helping to create celebrities of some of his female adult-film performers, including his wife Éva Henger and international superstars like Moana Pozzi, who died tragically of cancer at age 33.

Steigerwalt’s film is amusing and dramatic, tongue-in-cheek and tragic, and has superb acting throughout, led by Pietro Castellito (Riccardo), Tesa Litvan (Éva) and Denise Capezza (Moana), with—as the calming influence of the Schicchi empire, Debora Attanasio—the magnificent Barbara Ronchi the emotional anchor of the story.

4K/UHD Releases of the Week

Def Leppard—Diamond Star Heroes: Live From Sheffield

(Mercury)

For a triumphant return to its hometown of Sheffield in northern England in 2023, Def Leppard played the local soccer stadium for a 90-minute concert before tens of thousands of loyal fans that mixed the group’s biggest hits with a few deeper cuts; highlights are the early tracks “Bringing on the Heartbreak” and “Switch 625.” Singer Joe Elliott can still hit most of the high notes, impressive at his age (63 in ’23), and the band is tight and focused.

A bonus concert, at a Sheffield club a few nights earlier, is a 65-minute trek through some of the same hits and a couple different true-fan faves like “Let It Go” and “Wasted.” The UHD video and surround sound are first-rate.

Him

(Universal)

In this crudely if occasionally effective horror flick, college football player Cameron Cade—after being attacked by an unknown assailant after a game—goes to train privately before the pro combine with veteran NFL QB Isaiah White, whose unconventional methods result in sex, murder and a ridiculously risible final blood-letting.

Tyriq Withers is a persuasive, even sympathetic Cam, while Marlon Wayans brings gravitas to the young quarterback’s mentor. For 95 minutes, co-writer/director Justin Tipping hammers everything home so literally that it turns what could have been an enjoyably guilty pleasure into a visually striking mess. It does look terrific on UHD; extras include an alternate ending, deleted scene, and featurettes.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Burden of Dreams

(Criterion)

Les Blank and Maureen Gosling’s perceptive 1982 documentary about the stupendous (and often stupid) lengths that director Werner Herzog went to making his rain forest epic Fitzcarraldo is far more focused than Herzog’s feature, another of the German filmmaker’s adventurous but stillborn studies of madness. A precursor to the making-of featurettes that populate so many home media releases, Blank and Lassiter’s chronicle catches many interesting filmmaking moments—and Herzog, always a charming figure, has himself made far more memorable documentaries than features.

The film looks striking on Blu; extras comprise Blank’s, Gosling’s and Herzog’s insightful commentary, Blank’s amusing short Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980), deleted scenes and an archival Herzog interview.

Pavarotti—The Lost Concert

(Mercury/Universal)

In 1995, the great Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti gave a concert in Llangollen, a small town in Wales, 40 years after he won a vocal competition there, to keep a promise he made to return one day: the entire 75-minute concert, where he sang his greatest classical hits in front of tens of thousands, was recorded for posterity.

His delight is evident from the start, and he’s in fine form throughout. The video looks decent and the sound is good; lone extra is a 52-minute documentary that follows Pavarotti on his journey to the concert, although some of it repeats performances we see in the actual show.

Rick and Morty—Complete 8th Season

(Warner Bros)

The latest bonkers season begins with Morty and his sister Summer escaping the matrix into which their mad-scientist granddad Rick sent them after they took his phone charger—and that’s just the beginning of a series of dementedly witty episodes that features clones of the main characters that go off on further adventures.

The superb voice cast and the offhandedly clever animation provide special comic (and cosmic) dimension to these eight episodes; lone extra is an inside the season featurette with creator Dan Harmon and others.

CD Releases of the Week

Leoš Janáček—The Makropulos Affair/The Diary of the One Who Disappeared

(Somm)

Australian conductor Charles Mackerras (1925-2010) was an authority on the music of the Czech master Leoš Janáček (1854-1928), recording all of his major operas, especially in an unparalleled cycle for Decca Records back in the 1970s. One of Janáček’s towering masterpieces, The Makropulos Affair (better known as The Makropulos Case in America) had its London premiere in 1964 at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre, under Mackerras’ meticulous direction, with Marie Collier an unforgettable-sounding heroine.

Also on this two-disc set is a fine performance (from the BBC Studios in 1956) of the composer’s yearning song cycle The Diary of One Who Disappeared, sung in an English translation by tenor Richard Lewis and contralto Maureen Forrester, with Ernest Lush on piano.

Kurt Weill/Alan Jay Lerner—Love Life

(Capriccio)

This delectable 1948 time-traveling musical was the only collaboration of two musical geniuses: Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner. The amazing thing is that the finished work is so cohesive and flows so entertainingly, considering the outsized talents (and, no doubt, egos) of both men.

This excellent recording of a recent production of Opera North—located in Leeds, England—features wonderful singing, especially by the leads, Quirijin de Long and Stephanie Carley, along with the large supporting cast and chorus; while the orchestra, under conductor James Holmes, sounds wonderful throughout. Too bad this is an audio recording—a video of this staging would be unbeatable.

Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra Perform at Carnegie Hall

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Friday, 14 November 2025 14:54; Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Fadi Kheir

At the excellent Stern Auditorium, on the night of Monday, October 27th, I had the privilege to attend a fabulous concert—presented by Carnegie Hall—featuring the superior Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, admirably led by its Music Director and Conductor, Jaap van Zweden.

The event started brilliantly with the US premiere of Inferno by Jung Jae-il, who is known for his score for Bong Joon Ho’s extraordinary 2019 film, Parasite. The composer has commented on the work as follows:

This is the very last section of Italo Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities. Marco Polo says this to Kublai Khan:

“The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”

This piece began with that passage.

As I reflect on the countless deaths, suffering, and farewells caused by wars, plagues, and natural disasters occurring around the world, I realize that their scale is far beyond what I could ever fathom.

In the face of darkness and flames, where not even an inch ahead is visible, I tried to think about how we are to go on living.

Though I am a composer without formal classical training, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Maestro Jaap, who encouraged me from our very first meeting and gave me the courage to take on the challenge of composition.

Inferno opens forcefully and dissonantly but soon acquires a more meditative and elegiac cast; this section is succeeded by more exciting music, with a driving rhythm, and then a dulcet, more affirmative interlude arrested by dramatic measures. The composition concludes quietly but beautifully with another solemn episode. Jung was present to receive the audience’s acclaim.

An amazing soloist, Bomsori Kim—she wore a gorgeous, bright yellow gown—then entered the stage for a terrific performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s marvelous, Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64, which underwent its final revision in 1845–in the period after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and before Samuel Barber and the modernists, Mendelssohn’s concerto’s only peers may be those of Ludwig Van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and Jean Sibelius. The initial, Allegro molto appassionato movement begins lyrically and emotionally with some urgency but there are exquisite, reflective moments amidst the bewitching virtuosity; the music builds to a thrilling climax. The ensuing Andante is introspective but song-like too, an uninterrupted flow of irresistible melodies; it becomes more serious in inflection, ending softly. In the finale, a brief, pensive, Allegretto non troppo introduction is followed by an Allegro molto vivace main body that is propulsive and joyous; it closes exhilaratingly. Enthusiastic applause elicited an enjoyable encore from the soloist: Fritz Kreisler’s “Schön Rosmarin” from his Old Viennese Dances.

The second half of the evening was maybe even more memorable: a sumptuous account of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s magnificent Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, Op. 27, completed in 1907. The composition starts somewhat lugubriously with an extended Largo introduction; the movement’s Allegro moderato main body is livelier, although an undercurrent of sadness is discernible throughout—there are moments that recall the Sibelius of his Second and Fifth symphonies. Towards the end of the movement, the music accelerates, but it finishes abruptly. The succeeding Allegro molto is even more spirited—it has some playful qualities but it also expresses the longing that is a hallmark of Rachmaninoff’s creative personality. A central episode has an unusual intensity and turbulence; after another agitated section, it concludes quietly.

The Adagio is the most sheerly lovely of the movements, an outpouring of pure Romanticism; the music is much sunnier and more serene towards the close, ending pacifically. The finale, marked Allegro vivace, is largely exuberant, with a more consistently positive valence, although it is not entirely free from disquiet; it concludes triumphantly. A deserved, standing ovation was rewarded with another splendid, indeed exultant, encore: Antonín Dvořák’s delightful Presto from the Slavonic Dance in G Minor, Op. 46, No. 8.

November '25 Digital Week I

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 12 November 2025 15:38; Written by Kevin Filipski

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week

Nouvelle Vague

(Netflix/Film at Lincoln Center)

I’ve never been a Richard Linklater fan—even his “serious” films like Boyhood and Last Flag Flying are better in theory than in execution—but even by those standards, his paean to Jean-Luc Godard and the French New Wave seems like a particularly desperate way to look relevant to film buffs. The result might wow film festival audiences but is too lightweight for any insight into a classic era in cinema history.

And when Linklater introduces dozens of characters who have tangential or no relevance to the story being told of Godard directing his debut feature, 1959’s classic Breathless, the contrivance is eye-rolling. Some of the actors are good, like Zoey Deutsch’s charming Jean Seberg, while others are less so, like Guillaume Marbeck’s amusing but caricatured Godard and Aubry Dullin’s unmagnetic Jean-Paul Belmondo.

Hedda

(Amazon)

Despite a committed performance by Tessa Thompson as Henrik Ibsen’s fiery heroine, this shaky adaptation by writer-director Nia DaCosta seems content to willfully undermine Hedda Gabler, including making the pivotal character of Eilert—who was once in love with Hedda before ruining his life and their future—has become Eileen, for no good reason aside from giving Hedda a same-sex love interest.

Despite her good work with Thompson, DaCosta has also directed Nina Hoss—a heretofore indestructible actress—to shamelessly overdo it as Eileen, further making a mockery of a pivotal relationship in Ibsen’s play.

A House of Dynamite

(Netflix)

Director Kathryn Bigelow can ratchet up tension effortlessly, as in her real-life military and political dramas The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty and Detroit. Although this drama about a missile fired from somewhere in Asia that’s headed toward a major American city and how everyone from the president to those responsible for retaliatory weapons responds is tautly made and vividly written (by Noah Oppenheim), its many moments of real-life scariness owe a great debt to past films like Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove.

In fact, I couldn’t get the Kubrick classic out of my head, especially when Bigelow’s war room has a sign that reads “Big Board” and George C. Scott’s masterly comic performance in Strangelove reared its head. There’s excellent acting by Tracey Letts, Rebecca Ferguson, Idris Elba and Jared Harris, among others, but Bigelow and Oppenheim’s “beat the clock” precision leads to diminishing dramatic returns.

4K/UHD Releases of the Week

Andrea Bocelli—The Celebration: 30th Anniversary

(Mercury)

When beloved Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli wanted to commemorate three decades of his unparalleled singing career, so many celebrities and musicians came out to honor and perform with him that the celebration extended for three concerts in July 2024.

This two-disc set, comprising nearly five hours of music, includes Bocelli singing not only greatest “hits” like “O Sole Mio” and “Ave Maria” but also duetting with everyone from the amazing American soprano Nadine Sierra and pianist Lang Lang to pop singers and actors Katharine McPhee, Jon Batiste, Russell Crowe and even Will Smith. The highlight, though, is the unlikely but unexpectedly emotional performance of Queen’s “Who Wants to Live Forever” with the band’s legendary guitarist Brian May. It’s captured beautifully in UHD, with first-rate surround sound.

Downton Abbey—The Grand Finale

(Universal)

The final chapter in creator Julian Fellowes’ magnum opus about the interwoven lives of the Earl of Grantham’s family and their loyal (and occasionally disloyal) servants comes off as nothing more than a two-hour episode, but when it’s done this well by writer Fellowes, director Simon Curtis and the large cast led by Hugh Bonneville, Elizabeth McGovern, Michelle Dockery and Laura Carmichael, no fan of the series will complain.

Even a cameo by Noël Coward could have been a bit precious, but Arty Froushan’s understated portrayal works. There’s a sumptuous 4K transfer; extras include on-set featurettes and interviews along with a commentary by Curtis and McGovern.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

(Warner Bros)

After 50 years, Randall P. McMurphy remains Jack Nicholson’s signature role: the intense stare, smirking line readings, energy to burn and sarcastic attitude are present and accounted for in his performance, which won him his first best actor Oscar.

Milos Forman’s bittersweet tragicomedy about inmates at an Oregon insane asylum remains a touchstone film, mainly for the terrific supporting actors (Oscar winner Louis Fletcher, Brad Dourif, Will Samson, William Redfield, Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd). There’s also Forman's tenderness in presenting these people as victims of unfeeling bureaucracy, something unoriginal even in 1975 but which continues to reverberate strongly. Warners’ latest re-release includes a very good UHD transfer along with a few special features ported over from previous releases.

Blu-ray Release of the Week

Lady Chatterley’s Lover

(Icarus Films)

Marc Allegret’s tame 1955 adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s classic novel can only allude to Constance Chatterley’s sexual encounters with her husband’s gamekeeper Oliver, but the casting of Danielle Darrieux in one of literature’s greatest female roles at least makes this stuffy reimaging of the book watchable.

Of course, Constance and Oliver have a happy ending, instead of the novel’s more uncertain denouement, and Darrieux shines throughout, outclassing her costars, Leo Genn (husband) and Erno Crisa (lover). The film looks wonderful in a new restoration, but there are no extras.

CD Release of the Week

Pacifica Quartet—The Korngold Collection

(Cedille)

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) was a musical prodigy, as the remarkably mature and inventive chamber works on this disc—played sensitively by the Pacifica Quartet and special guests—indisputably demonstrate.

Korngold would later become famous when he moved to Hollywood and wrote some of the most memorable and rousing film scores ever, but several of these chamber-music gems (he wrote the superlative string sextet at age 17!) prove that he was a masterly composer from the start: the first quartet, piano quintet and sextet are as adventurous and confident in their musical language as quartets 2 and 3, which Korngold wrote years later.

Schreker/Korngold/Krenek—Orchestral Works

(BIS)

Franz Schreker (1878-1934), Erich Korngold (1897-1957) and Ernst Krenek (1900-91) were three of the most inventive composers of their time—but their wholly original, often innovative music went out of fashion after World War II, as serialism and atonality took over from their grandly ambitious Viennese sounds.

But the works on this CD—performed beautifully by the Orchestre national des Pays de la Loire under conductor Sacha Goetzel—provide a glimpse into their accomplished artistry in the shimmering loveliness of Schreker’s overture to his magnificent opera Die Gezeichneten, the youthful dazzlement of the 16-year-old Korngold’s Sinfonietta, and the alternately festive and melancholy feeling of Krenek’s Potpourri.

Reviews

Off-Broadway Musical Review—“The Seat of Our Pants” at the Public Theater

November '25 Digital Week II

Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra Perform at Carnegie Hall

November '25 Digital Week I

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