Premiering two musicals in repertory, Signature Theatre may break new ground

It’s a Sunday afternoon rehearsal, and Signature Theatre’s small Ark space is snowed under with paper; it looks like the floor of the New York Stock Exchange after a nutty day. Actors and creative staff sit in the house, facing the six musicians on the stage. Everyone scrutinizes oversize, taped-together sheets of music as they put together the new musical “The Boy Detective Fails.”

Next door, in Signature’s slightly larger Max theater, two actors stand motionless on the wide, eerily empty stage. Above them loom dimly lit branches. The rest is darkness.

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(Bill O'Leary/WASHINGTON POST) - The poster outside of the building illustrates Signature Theaters' ambitious staging of two new works at the same time.

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“They’ve been standing there for 25 minutes,” a staffer whispers. Somewhere in the murk, the director and designers are adjusting the lighting for the new musical “The Hollow.”

This week both musicals will premiere at the Max, in repertory — same designers, same orchestra, many of the same actors, and alternating on the same stage. Regional theaters seldom offer plays in repertory; premiering two new musicals in tandem is apparently unheard of.

It’s certainly a first for Signature, even with its tradition of taking on new material. And as the troupe hammered out contracts, they learned that they may be breaking new ground, period. The actors’ and musicians’ unions had no exact precedent for what Signature was trying to do.

“First of all,” says “Boy Detective” director Joe Calarco, “there’s nothing harder than the premiere of a new musical. Ever, ever, ever. And then to do two at once . . .”

“I think I was probably drunk when I thought about it,” jokes Signature artistic director Eric Schaeffer. He’s sitting in the Marquis Theatre on Broadway; adding complexity to this rep are the facts that in July, Schaeffer moved his “Million Dollar Quartet” from Broadway to off-Broadway, and that now his production of “Follies,” which closed at the Kennedy Center in late June, is adjusting to New York (it’s in previews). So Schaeffer had no choice but to withdraw from directing “The Hollow,” and he isn’t around much to supervise or cheerlead. Matthew Gardiner, recently named Signature’s associate artistic director, stepped in.

But it was Schaeffer’s adoration of “The Hollow” and “The Boy Detective Fails” that led to the current ambitious pairing at Signature. In the summer of 2009, both pieces were workshopped together at the theater as part of the American Musical Voices Project: The Next Generation. “The Hollow” is an adaptation of Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” with music and lyrics by longtime Signature actor-composer Matt Conner. (His first musical for the troupe was “Nevermore,” based on the writings of Edgar Allan Poe.)

“The Boy Detective Fails” is based on Joe Meno’s novel about a Hardy Boys-style teen sleuth, now 30, who is deeply traumatized by his younger sister’s suicide. The Chicago-based Meno was e-mailed by up-and-coming New York composer-lyricist Adam Gwon about turning the show into a musical; nine months later they met face to face for the first time at the Signature workshop with the draft they had written long-distance.