IT’S BEEN NO WALK IN THE PARK TO ‘SUNDAY’

“Is there life after Sondheim?”

For Fran Soeder, 36, the question is not idle. Poised to open “Sunday in the Park With George” for the Long Beach Civic Light Opera tonight (a production that uses the original Broadway sets), he’s caught in a bind. His own career took off just as the New York musical theater went into a decline.

What’s a bright young director to do? Go west. Of course.

“I’m in a spot where it’s going to be a while before someone puts $5 million on my shoulders,” Soeder said on a recent morning. “So, aside from staging ‘Sunday,’ it’s a chance to explore the Los Angeles area.”

Soeder’s done a lot of Sondheim--including “Sunday,” “A Little Night Music,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Anyone Can Whistle,” “Follies” and the off-Broadway production of “Pacific Overtures” which brought him a great deal of attention in 1984.

“I’m not interested in re-deepening familiar grooves,” he said of his affection for Sondheim’s work. “For me, things really got going with ‘West Side Story.’ ” Yet Sondheim was not his earliest influence.

“It wasn’t until I saw the national tour of Hal Prince’s ‘Cabaret’ that I decided I wanted to be a director,” he said. “If a man could put that kind of signature on a piece, that was what I wanted to be.”

An intense, soft-spoken young man, with close cropped hair and rough, asymmetrical features, Soeder’s reserve belies his passion. It’s no surprise to find he had been a seminarian his first summer out of high school in Cleveland, before opting for Kent State University--and theater as religion.

“Most people out of the Midwest get out of college and race to New York,” he said, “I’d decided I’d wait until I had a resume that might open doors.” His first big job was assisting Prince on “Sweeney Todd.”

“I’d always known that, at some point, I’d have to connect with that man,” he said. “In the nine months I was with Hal, I asked a lot of questions and learned to create my own language.”

That language has been a highly individual form of minimalism, often dictated by necessity. It earned him a reputation. Most of the work he’s done, “I’ve either scaled down or approached with a different idea.”

“A Little Night Music” was seen through the eyes of Desiree’s daughter (“a chamber piece in an upholstered room”). “Anyone Can Whistle” was environmental (“The audience sat through an earthquake”). And in a recent staging of a musical of “The Shop on Main Street,” he used 24 lifelike marionettes instead of a large cast.

“It underscored the idea of a puppet government during Hitler’s era,” Soeder said. “In the long run, it made the production stronger.”

But it was “Pacific Overtures,” first mounted by him at Cleveland’s Cain Park, then remounted off Broadway, that brought him major critical and audience attention.

“Most of the actors in the company had never sung in their lives,” Soeder said, still unable to conceal his amazement. “All I know is that we opened--and everything changed. From that day on.”

Since then Soeder’s mounted a work-in-progress by Joseph Masteroff and Howard Merrin (“Georgia House”) and a revival of “Irma La Douce” at the Goodspeed Opera House. But Broadway’s eluded him.

“I work consistently,” he said. “I’m able to choose projects. But (“Overtures”) put me in a very big league at a time when the New York theater is amazingly insecure.” So, when Long Beach approached him about directing “Sunday” on the recommendation of its original director, James Lapine, Soeder said yes.

“There was a lot of red tape to getting this production,” he said. “It’s a remarkable accomplishment that they achieved the New York sets. I had initial reservations about using them, because I’m forced to be true to the designers and to Jim (Lapine)--I can’t just restage the show my own way. At the same time I realize you can’t change the (Seurat) portrait either.

“I’m keeping an open mind to the piece. I’m letting the content dictate the form. If you ever look at a Sondheim libretto, you’ll see it’s like a Triple-A Trip Tik: He takes you by the hand, tells you exactly what he wants people to do, even if it’s a tiny gesture like, ‘He dabs assiduously with his brush.’ With Sondheim you don’t tamper, you don’t clutter. You simply work to focus the spoken word.

“Not that he’s not open to new interpretations. My interpretation of ‘Pacific Overtures’ had a lot to do with Walt Disney because I found that Kabuki, Bunraku and Noh were very slow. I basically approached ‘Pacific Overtures’ to stress the vulnerability of this fairy-tale kingdom that had lived innocence and isolation for all these years. What was there I staged in terms of relationships.

“I think people forget with Sondheim shows how much about relationships they really are. The big challenge here will be to focus ‘Sunday’ in a larger theater. Sondheim said to me, ‘Fran, make the points. The audience must know where to look and what to listen for.’ ”

Fran? “Short for Francis. I’m only grateful it isn’t Frannie.”