Dorothy Loudon, Linda Emond, Mario Cantone and Jim Newman will join the already announced Bebe Neuwirth, David Garrison, Megan Lawrence and Sharon Wilkins for Signature Theatre's January-February 1999 world premiere of Over & Over, the new John Kander and Fred Ebb musicalization of The Skin of Our Teeth.

The Jan. 6-Feb. 14, 1999 run in Arlington, VA., is sold out, according to Signature artistic director (and Over & Over director) Eric D. Schaeffer. "We are trying to make more performances possible to meet the high demand for tickets," Schaeffer said in a statement.

Loudon, who originated the role of Miss Hannigan in Annie, will play LuLu Shriner in the Thornton Wilder-based musical. Newman, who recently toured in the rewrite of Big and played bumpkin dancer Happy in Kander and Ebb's Steel Pier, will play Henry. Cantone, who replaced Nathan Lane in Broadway's Love! Valour! Compassion! and was a hit in the "Encores!" staging of The Boys From Syracuse, plays the Stage Manager. Emond, recently of Broadway's 1776, will play Mrs. Antrobus.

The artistic staff for the new musical includes Kander (composer), Ebb (lyricist), Joseph Stein (book), Schaeffer (director), Bob Avian (choreographer), Patrick Vacciarello (musical director), Howell Binkley (lighting designer), Lou Stancari (set designer) and Anne Kennedy (costume designer).

* Tony-winner Neuwirth, of Chicago fame, stars as the wily maid, Sabina, who saltily caters to the Antrobus family, a clan that survives disasters of Biblical proportions. Wilder's allegory for humanity's resilience first starred Tallulah Bankhead as Sabina.

Neuwirth most recently appeared as Velma Kelly in the Broadway revival of Chicago -- a role for which she won a Tony Award. She also won a Tony for her appearance in the '80s Broadway revival of Sweet Charity.

Garrison, who played the villainous Ismay in Titanic, as Mr. Antrobus; Lawrence (Les Miserables ) as Antrobus' daughter Gladys; and Wilkins (The Life ) as God and the Fortune Teller. Garrison played Antrobus in a New York reading of the musical this past summer.

Over & Over rehearsals begin in December. Opening is Jan. 6, 1999.

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Back in June, Eric D. Schaeffer, artistic director of Arlington, VA's Signature Theatre and a musical director of growing reputation, directed a reading of Kander and Ebb's new musical adaptation of The Skin of Our Teeth. The show was soon announced for the Signature schedule with the title, Over & Over.

The show's reading score included: "Eat The Ice Cream," "The Wheel," "Nice People," "I Can See The Future," "The Promise," "At The Rialto" and "The Skin of Our Teeth."

The cast of the reading included Debra Monk (Steel Pier ) and David Garrison (Titanic ) in the lead roles of Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus, with Michele Pawk as their conniving maid, the temptress Sabina. Carol Woods played the fortune teller.

Schaeffer said this was the first reading of Skin in which he'd been involved, and that he had been working with the composers for some time. The score, he said, is big, totaling some 15 or 16 songs. "I think it's one of their best scores ever," Schaeffer said.

Schaeffer will direct the full production, one reason Kander & Ebb chose to debut Over & Over in DC. "Redoing The Rink at Signature Theatre was one of the best working experiences in our career," said Ebb in a statement. "Signature audiences are receptive, warm and intelligent. We hope to come up with something that will be as delightful to experience as it was for us to write."

When Steel Pier was in spring 1997 rehearsals, Ebb told Playbill On-Line that he'd begun Skin of Our Teeth before Steel Pier, but because of the unique nature of the show's structure, they needed a director with a unique vision to carry it off.

Schaefer directed a critically-praised reinterpretation of Sondheim & Lapine's Passion in 1996, which put him on the map nationally. For NY City's Center's "Encores!" series, he directed the 1997 production of Sweet Adeline.

The songwriting team told Playbill On-Line in January that they had moved The Skin of Our Teeth to the top of their agenda. Speaking just hours after his Chicago revival CD was nominated for a Grammy Award, composer Kander said he and lyricist Ebb are "working away on a revision" of their Skin of Our Teeth musical, which had a New York workshop production with Monk, James Naughton and Bernadette Peters in summer 1996. "It's very much on the front burner," he said.

Among Kander & Ebb's other musicals are Cabaret, Steel Pier, The Kiss of the Spider Woman, Zorba, Woman of the Year, The Rink and And The World Goes 'Round.

The Skin of Our Teeth is one of the more unorthodox plays to have won the Pulitzer Prize (1943). A wide-ranging, sometimes surreal allegory about the human spirit and survival ("by the skin of our teeth"), it tells the story of the Antrobus family of New Jersey, and how they withstand ice ages, hurricanes, temptations of the flesh and other apocalyptic travails.

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Also lined up for the 1998-99 Signature season:
A Little Night Music (Aug. 18-Sept. 27) will open the season, continuing the theatre's tradition of staging Sondheim. Directing will be Frank Lombardi, who recently assisted Signature Artistic Director Eric Schaeffer on the theatre's current attraction, The Fix.

Next on the line-up is Nijinsky's Last Dance (Nov. 3-Dec. 13) by 0e's playwright-in-residence, Norman Allen. The one-man drama delves into the dancer's psyche during the last moments of his life.

After Over & Over comes Tell Me on a Sunday (Mar. 16-Apr. 25, opening Mar. 22). The musical originally appeared as the first half of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Song and Dance, which starred Bernadette Peters in its 1985 Broadway incarnation. Sherri Edelen, who appeared in Signature's Assassins and The Rink, plays an English girl coming to terms with American customs and men. Marcia Gardner will direct.

The company will then present Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches (May. 25-July 3, 1999, opening June 1, 1999), under the direction of Lee Mikeska Gardner. The season final selection will be a Washington or world premiere musical director by Schaeffer, to be announced this fall.

For information on any of the productions, call (703) 218-6500.

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As for progress on the recent Signature musical The Fix , Signature spokesperson Paul Gamble told Playbill On-Line (July 9), the show was still seeking out a regional venue, as it needs "one more production before New York."

The Dana P. Rowe-John Dempsey musical received its London premiere in spring 1997 at the Donmar Warehouse, under the direction of Sam Mendes. Cameron Mackintosh, who was a producer of that staging and controls the rights to the show, has a hand in the Signature mounting. Gamble said that since that incarnation, the musical -- about the rise and fall of an American politician -- has added five new songs and the book has been substantially changed.

-- By Kenneth Jones
and Robert Simonson and David Lefkowitz