Kitt to Star in Mimi le Duck; Likely for All About Us

Tony Award-nominee Eartha Kitt will join Annie Golden and others for Mimi le Duck, a new musical that will open at New World Stages on October 31st after beginning previews on October 11th, according to Variety.

Kitt will play a Parisian torch singer in the show, while Golden--who was previously seen in the show in 2004 when it played the Adirondack Theater and New York International Fringe festivals--will take on the title role of Miriam, "a discontented Mormon housewife from Ketchum, Idaho, who, in a moment of desperate inspiration (and a visit from the ghost of Ernest Hemingway), packs her bags and moves to Paris, leaving behind her husband and her career as a duck painter for QVC," according to New World Stages notes.  Also in the cast will be Ken Jennings (Urinetown, Side Show, Sweeney Todd) and Candy Buckley (Bernarda Alba, Cabaret), among others.

Mimi le Duck features music by Brian Feinstein, with music and lyrics by former congresswoman and children's book scribe Diana Hansen-Young.   Thomas Caruso--who previously directed Mimi le Duck--will again stage the musical.  Aruba Prods., Ken Denison and Carol Fishman (Bingo) will serve as executive producers and general managers. 

Kitt last appeared on Broadway in Nine. A two-time Tony Award-nominee for her performances in The Wild Party and Timbuktu!, she has also been seen on Broadway in Shinbone Alley, Mrs. Patterson and Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1952. Perhaps best known to most audiences for her work as Catwoman on TV's "Batman" series, Kitt's film credits include The Emperor's New Groove, Harriet the Spy, Boomerang, Ernest Scared Stupid, Anna Lucasta and St. Louis Blues.  A respected chanteuse, her albums include"That Bad Eartha," 'Down to Eartha" and "Back in Business."

Golden originated the role of "Squeaky" Fromme in the original Off-Broadway production of Assassins.  She has also appeared on Broadway in The Full Monty, On the Town, Ah! Wilderness, Leader of the Pack and Hair, as well as in the Actors' Fund benefit concert of Hair.  Other Off-Broadway credits include The Ark, People Be Heard, La Terrasse, and The Sugar Bean Sisters.

Variety also reports that Kitt is expected to play the role of the Gypsy in All About Us--a musical with music by John Kander, lyrics by the late Fred Ebb and a book by Joseph Stein based on Thorton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth--that will be presented by the Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut in April.  While the show has received several workshops, it has not had a major production since its premiere at Arlington, VA's Signature Theatre in 1999.  Gabriel Barre will direct the revised version of the musical, which will feature a multi-ethnic 17-member cast (no other performers have been announced).  The musical celebrates the endurance of the human spirit as Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus, with the maid and narrator Sabina, traverse the centuries.