Public Theater

In his frequent visits to Joe's Pub, writer-composer-performer Ethan Lipton has sometimes shared clever, unassuming musicals that compressed big subjects like space travel and AI into storytelling cabarets. He goes wider in scale—and moves to one of the Public's larger stages—with this musical adaptation of Thornton Wilder's rule-shattering, Pulitzer-winning 1942 allegory The Skin of Our Teeth, which takes a New Jersey family from the Ice Age to the end of the world. (Kander and Ebb tried for years to adapt the same play, without much success.) Lipton's usual director, Leigh Silverman (Suffs), navigates the transhistorical madness with help and ace cast led by Shuler Hensley, Ruthie Ann Miles, Micaela Diamond, Damon Daunno, Amina Faye, Ally Bonino and Andy Grotelueschen.

Julia Mattison and Joel Waggoner's holiday show began as an online lark: they challeneged themselves to write a new song for each December day before Christmas. But it has since grown into a yearly live tradition, most recently at Joe's Pub. This year, popular demand has propelled the show into a longer run (eight shows) in a larger space at the Public (the Shiva Theater). Mattison and Waggoner are very gifted performers and musical comedians—she earned a Tony nomination earlier this year for co-writing the score to Death Becomes Her—so their yuletide originals and improvised carols have the potential to knock your stockings off.