The songwriting team of Kander & Ebb has moved their musical adaptation of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth to the top of their agenda, Kander told Playbill On-Line.

Speaking just hours after his Chicago revival CD was nominated for a Grammy Award, composer John Kander said he and lyricist Fred Ebb are "working away on a revision" of their Skin of Our Teeth musical, which had a New York workshop production in summer 1996. "It's very much on the front burner," he said. "We hope to have a two-week rehearsed reading" in New York this spring.

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.

Kander said he and Ebb also have resumed work on Curtains, a musical murder mystery set in Boston's Colonial Theatre. Curtains has a book by Peter Stone (Titanic, 1776, The Will Rogers Follies). Kander said the three of them started work on the project 11 years ago, "but all of us got distracted" by other projects -- including Tony-winners Kiss of the Spider Woman, The Will Rogers Follies and Titanic.-- By Robert Viagas