Signature's Turn, Sans Turntable, With 'Les Miz'

That's fine with Schaeffer. The company that only recently grew out of its former auto-garage home is well known for not doing retreads.

"It's like in the garage!" Schaeffer gushes as he leads a tour of Spangler's environmental set in the Max, the bigger of Signature's two spaces in Shirlington. Spangler's thrust stage takes up nearly the theater's entire footprint; the audience seems like an afterthought, with narrow "moats" for seating carved around the playing area.

"They're in it," Schaeffer says of the patrons, who will begin arriving Tuesday as the show starts its two-week preview period. "It's only five rows deep."

That might be the key difference as Signature puts its stamp on "Les Miz," which has been getting new looks lately in regional theaters across the country. Licensing began last year (high school versions have been sanctioned for some time), and a staging by Atlanta's Theater of the Stars played Wolf Trap last summer. Original productions in Chicago, Philadelphia and elsewhere have been greeted with praise and local awards.

But Signature is the smallest professional venue to offer it thus far, and probably the first to try an environmental design that wraps the audience and actors in the same aesthetic world. Greg Stone is the heroic lead, Jean Valjean -- Stone also played the role in New York and on tour -- and he knows a lot of people involved in the recent regional productions.

"There haven't been a lot of big risks taken," says Stone, who describes this staging as "darker" and with "more edge." "This is the one that's going to be more different than what's been done before."

"It seems very intense," original "Les Miz" producer Cameron Mackintosh says from London, to where the Signature staff e-mailed production photos. (Mackintosh and Signature have collaborated in the past.) "Eric's always putting a big-sized company together, and scenically he's able to create miracles in that space."

Schaeffer's creative team all recall when and where they first saw Nunn's acclaimed production, and how many times they caught it subsequently. The exception is music director Jon Kalbfleisch, who was on hand too many times to count as associate conductor on Broadway and on tour in the mid-1990s. (He also played keyboard for the Wolf Trap production.)

Kalbfleisch, like Stone, notes that the sheer repetition sometimes led to a mechanical quality; Stone even uses the word "animatronic." But Kalbfleisch also testifies that the original production was foolproof, able to withstand rampant last-minute cast substitutions and sloppy, tough-luck nights. "It didn't matter," Kalbfleisch says. "People applauding, in tears."

"Les Miz," adapted from Victor Hugo's novel by the French composing team of Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, was Spangler's first musical. He says John Napier's set "is one of my favorite designs, ever. It remains unsurpassed, as far as I'm concerned, in the musical theater. The combination of kinetic scenery and kinetic staging and choreography is unique."

Yet neither Spangler nor the rest of Schaeffer's team seem especially daunted by the prospect of working in this mega-musical's immense shadow. Not even costume designer Kathleen Geldard, a relatively late replacement working on what is easily her largest project yet ("by probably 50 costumes," she reckons). Working from the ground up has been liberating, and Schaeffer has encouraged everyone to think outside the box. Geldard drew sketches for eight days straight on her dining room table, then got a provocative e-mail from Schaeffer that read, "Call me crazy, but I'm thinking black, black, black."

Geldard says, "I was like, 'Black and white Xerox copies, here I come!' "