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ALL ABOUT US "The New Outrageous Kander and Ebb Musical !" Westport Country Playhouse, Westport, Connecticut Book by Joseph Stein Music & Lyrics by John Kander & Fred Ebb Based on Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth All About Us opened the Playhouse's 2007 season and ran from April 10th to April 28th. westportplayhouse.org

  The production of All About Us that opened Thursday night at the Westport County Playhouse does everything it should. Under the hilariously over-the-top direction of Gabriel Barre, the musical is by turns funny, moving, deadly serious, and wildly entertaining, a rich and largely faithful version of the American classic.

Barre's talented cast of theater veterans boast singing voices and performances that could not be finer.....Shuler Hensley (Jud Fry in Oklahoma!) brings his powerful voice and world-weary manners to the part of George Antrobus, the inventor who has begun to think it's futile to go on.

There may be no better time for this sparkling, funny and moving re-adaptation of Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, a play that is ultimately about human survival and persistence in the face of impossible odds. Westport's All About Us is, indeed, all about us.

Deborah Hornblow, Hartford Courant (Full review no longer online.) 

W/ Cady Huffman. Credit: Richard Termine for BroadwayWorld.com

  All About Us is based on Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Skin of Our Teeth. Book is by Joseph Stein (Fiddler on the Roof), music and lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb (Chicago, Cabaret). All About Us was one of Kander/Ebb's last collaborations before Ebb’s death in 2004.

"You will relate to the Antrobus family stress as they deal with disruptive children, a seductive maid, and even - a woolly mammoth! Exploring the meaning of family, the value of imagination and the little things in life worth cherishing, All About Us, a musical adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth, passionately reflects an optimistic view of life’s miracles – the quintessential story of humanity and survival." (Westport Country Playhouse)

"The new musical has a dazzling profusion of themes, including the importance of family.  A wild, humorous, poignant and emotional journey, All About Us is the story of the bewitched, befuddled and becalmed Antrobus family who have survived a thousand calamities by the skin of their teeth. The musical is a tribute to their indestructibility and a testament of faith in humanity." (Press release)

"All About Us, which is set in the "Now and Always," concerns Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus, as well as sexy narrator/maid Sabina - all of whom traverse the centuries in a theatrical ode to human will and resilience". (Broadwayworld.com)

"The story kind of takes place forever. It's about the human race as seen through the eyes of a suburban New Jersey family during the '50s or '60s, although the date is not exact. The family lives through cataclysmic events such as the ice age, the story of Noah's ark and World War II. In short, it's a history of our people. We were deeply involved with it from the beginning and would not let it die. We thought it had something really important to say to today's audience, and we say it with humor." (Joseph Stein in interview with Nadia Lerner, Southern Connecticut Advocate)

W/ Yvette Freeman. Credit: Richard Termine for BroadwayWorld.com

  This production is a revamped version of the show  - previous versions were presented under the titles Over and Over and The Skin of Our Teeth.

"All About Us had a long gestation period beginning with a 1999 production at Signature, helmed by the theater's a.d. Eric D. Schaeffer. The project then disappeared until Kander & Ebb and book writer Joseph Stein began reworking the script with new helmer Gabriel Barre. 'We kept working on it around Fred's kitchen table because we all just loved it,' says Stein, 94. 'We learned a lot from the Signature production and we were still enormously enthusiastic about it. It was at least 95% done when Fred died.' A 2005 workshop at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, N.J., gave the creative team confidence in their revisions. Producers Roger Berlind, David Brown and Jacki Barlia-Florin teamed with Kander and Stein to fund the workshop. Barlia-Florin then arranged for a presentation for reps of regional not-for-profits in January 2006. Westport was selected as the venue for the new version's preem and the show, with a cast of 17, runs April 10-28." (Variety)

In rehearsal w/ Samantha Futerman. Credit: Walter McBride/Retna Ltd
more photos 

CAST & COMPANY:

Shuler plays Mr Antrobus. Joining him in the cast are the legendary Eartha Kitt as Esmeralda the Fortune Teller, and Cady Huffman as Sabina the maid. Ms Huffman was the original Ulla in The Producers on Broadway, and won the 2001 Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.

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