Kaye Ballard, Georgia Engel, Mimi Hines, Darlene Love and Lee Meriwether will star in the 20th anniversary tour of Nunsense, the hit Off-Broadway musical that has become an international habit.

The tour, which casts Ballard as Mother Superior, Engel as Sister Mary Leo, Hines as Sister Mary Amnesia, Love as Sister Mary Hubert and Meriwether as Sister Robert Anne, will launch in the fall of 2003. The original creative team — including author Dan Goggin as director and Felton Smith as musical stager — will be on board. Scott M. Robbins will produce.

Since its debut at the Cherry Lane Theatre, Nunsense has played in over 20 countries. The musical concerns the wacky adventures of the Little Sisters of Hoboken, and song titles include "Nunsense Is Habit-Forming," "So You Want to Be a Nun," "Growing Up Catholic," "Gloria in Excelsis Deo" and "Holier Than Thou." Subsequent versions have been titled Nunsense 2: The Second Coming, Nunsense 3: The Jamboree, Nunsense A-Men! and Nuncrackers: The Nunsense Christmas.

The latest version, Meshuggah-Nuns — a new show with a touch of Yiddish — began an open-ended run at the Chanhassen Dinner Theatres' Fireside Theatre in Minneapolis on Sept. 6.

—By Andrew Gans
and Kenneth Jones