Westport Season to Include All About Us, Revamped Version of Kander & Ebb Musical Based on The Skin of Our Teeth

The 2007 slate of shows at the Westport Country Playhouse will be highlighted by the world premiere of All About Us, a revision of the John Kander-Fred Ebb musical based on Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth. The season will also include the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning play The Heidi Chronicles, by the late Wendy Wasserstein; Sedition, a new work by David Wiltse, the theater’s playwright in residence; and four more shows that are yet to be chosen.

All About Us will kick off the season with performances April 10-28. This is a revamped version of the show with a score by Kander & Ebb (Cabaret, Chicago, etc.) and a book by Joseph Stein (Fiddler on the Roof, etc.), based on the Wilder play; previous versions were presented under the titles Over and Over and The Skin of Our Teeth. The final revision is the last musical written by the legendary Kander & Ebb team before Ebb’s death in 2004. Gabriel Barre will direct the Westport production.

Next up in the season will be The Heidi Chronicles (May 31-June 16), directed by Tazewell Thompson. The play follows its heroine, Heidi Holland — and the progress of a generation — from the socially and politically activist 1960s to the success-oriented ’80s, a period during which the status of American women underwent profound and sometimes unsettling change.

Wiltse’s Sedition tells the true story of a man whose conscience forced him to stand up in defense of freedom of speech during World War I. Set on a college campus, the play poses the questions: What does it mean to be an American patriot? And what is freedom of speech? The Westport production will play August 23-September 8; no director has yet been named.

Among the plays under consideration to round out the theater’s 2007 season are Auntie and Me, by Morris Panych; The Entertainer, by John Osborne; For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again, by Michel Tremblay; The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams; The Innocents, by William Archibald; Mixed Company (working title), a show conceived by Billy Porter that combines the words of William Shakespeare with the songs of Stephen Sondheim; Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck; and Time of My Life, by Alan Ayckbourn.

For further information, call 203-227-4177 or visit the website www.westportplayhouse.org.