‘THIS IS THE BIG TIME’ : NEW INCARNATION FOR ‘BAKER’S WIFE’

“The Baker’s Wife” lives.

Los Angeles got its last glimpse of the Stephen Schwartz/Joe Stein musical in 1976, when it was part of the Civic Light Opera’s summer season. “Then it went to San Francisco, St. Louis, Boston and Washington, D.C.,” explained Greg MacKellan, who with partner Richard Green is producing the latest reincarnation of “Baker’s,” opening Saturday at the Coast Playhouse.

“It was one of the legendary disastrous tours,” MacKellan said. “People were being fired left and right. Topol was the lead, then he was replaced by Paul Sorvino. It went through two or three directors, choreographers, leading ladies. There were like 20 different versions of the show, jokes calling it ‘Sourdough’. . . . “

But MacKellan, a sometime actor, saw it at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion “before the horror set in,” and was impressed--impressed enough to see it a few times and buy the cast album (recorded although the show never got to Broadway, closing one week before it was scheduled to move).

He remained a fan and upon his 1980 introduction to Green, a UCLA film school graduate (currently co-producing his first feature for Warner Bros.), convinced him they should try to revive the work.

Interviewed recently at Green’s West Hollywood apartment--just around the corner from the theater--the young producers (Green is 29, MacKellan 31) recalled their first meeting with the play’s creators in 1981.

Said Green: “They probably thought we were going to be a (harmless) couple of kids, we’d get up a production and that’d be that.

“The following April, Steve (Schwartz) came out for rewrites, because we’d set up a production at the Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara. And admittedly, he was expecting to listen to a few ideas, then say, ‘That’s nice, guys, but we’ll take care of it.’

“Instead, we sat down to three days of real intense story meetings, and Steve went back to the East Coast saying, ‘Maybe there is a way to work this.’ ”

“Joe Stein has said that he loves this show more than any other he’s written--presumably that includes ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ and ‘Zorba,’ ” MacKellan added.

“And I think Steve feels that way, too. Certainly, it’s a very different work for him: ‘Pippin’ and ‘Godspell’ are really soft-rock-flavored scores, and this obviously had a very French, classical element to it--not rock at all.”

The story, MacKellan said, is based on the film “La Femme du Boulanger” by Marcel Pagnol, about an older baker and his young wife--who takes off with a young handyman. But the townspeople, finding their bread supply affected by the baker’s sorrow, persuade her to come back.

“And in the process, the wife has discovered that it wasn’t necessarily the hot young stud she wanted, but that she really had something special with the baker.

“An unusual ending--bittersweet, not your typical ‘OK, everything’s forgotten’; it’s sort of, ‘Now we see each other, who we are.’ The wife is not the sweet angel he’d once envisioned, but she does love him.”

It was the title character (played here by Alix Korey) that was the source of many past problems, Green and MacKellan believe.

“She came across as very cold, hard, an unlikable character,” MacKellan said, “definitely not your typical musical comedy ingenue.”

However, since an independent Chicago outing in 1983 (produced by the Woodstock Opera House), Green said the writers “have made further strides in softening her up with structural changes, putting in a new song for the baker and his wife. . . . “

Interviewed by phone from New York, Stein asserted his dedication to the show:

“I truly believe in it, I believe it will not die. People like it--it really has a cult following. The quality is very strong, the story is superb. I’ve done a number of shows that I wouldn’t want to revive. But this is kind of special.

“And those boys (Green and MacKellan) are wonderful,” he continued, “so enthusiastic. That’s why Steve and I decided to work with them. Because you can’t buy enthusiasm. Any producer can invest money, but their kind of love and dedication you can’t buy.”

Yet, Green and MacKellan had nothing to do with the Chicago production. They flew to New York last year for its latest staging by the York Theatre Company in a sense to say goodby.

“Then we saw the show,” Green said, “and Steve had come so close to making it perfect. We’d forgotten how much we loved it and believed in it. So we said, ‘We’ve got to do it one more time.’ ”

They believe what’s resulted is not only the “definitive” version, “but this time,” Green said, “I think we’ve got a hit.”

He credits director Susan Schulman for “figuring out the last step. Before, it had been done so seriously, treated as a slice of life. But it’s a fable , a comedy, and you can’t ignore that. The characters have to be heightened, stylized.”

Added MacKellan, “It needs to not be treated as this little jewel of a show, but just a fun good time.”

And when the fun finally ends?

“Our love for the show is by no means blind,” Green said.

Echoed MacKellan, “We’ve definitely got other things we’re anxious to get going after this show is on its feet.”

For the moment, though, the play’s the thing.

“This is the big time for ‘The Baker’s Wife,’ ” MacKellan said confidently.

“After all, it’s had what amounts to a 10-year out-of-town tryout.”