SCHAEFER POLISHING SOME MUSICAL GEMS

George Schaefer admits he’s “partly to blame” for the whole idea of Musical Comedy/LA, which opens its first season at the Doolittle Theatre on Friday night with Rodgers and Hart’s “The Boys From Syracuse.”

When Center Theatre Group withdrew from its partnership with UCLA in running the Doolittle, Schaefer reasoned that there was no reason to compete with it. “Gordon Davidson has done so well by drama, I thought why not do musicals-- real musicals. Why not do them like Santa Fe does operas? Why not make our own sets and costumes from scratch? Everybody is working for the lowest scale possible.”

“The Boys From Syracuse” will play in repertory for six weeks with Jerome Kern’s “Leave It to Jane,” which opens July 18. Schaefer is directing “Leave It to Jane”; Michael Montel, who most recently staged “West Side Story” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, is directing “The Boys From Syracuse.”

“I must take full responsibility for choosing the plays and the staffs,” Schaefer said during a lunch break between rehearsals at UCLA’s Wadsworth Theater. “Michael (Montel) and Onna White, our supervising choreographer, shared in the casting.”

A short, stocky dynamo, Schaefer, who is one of television’s most highly honored directors, became chairman of UCLA’s department of film, theater and television in March, 1986.

“I’m very thrilled at the idea of having two musicals in repertory, but it was very difficult to find two that would combine well for a cast of 34. The biggest headache was to come up with two sets of twins. I’d seen ‘Leave It to Jane’ at the Sheridan Square revival in the ‘60s and I’d seen ‘The Boys From Syracuse’ when it opened at the Alvin, while I was in college. I love the theater--I’ve seen everything since the ‘30s.

“ ‘Leave It to Jane’ is a little gem. We have the original orchestrations that were in that treasure trove of musical compositions discovered recently in Secaucus, N.J. It took six weeks of hard legal discussions to get to use them, but we won’t go into that.

“ ‘The Boys From Syracuse’ is almost a spoof, and Michael is having great fun with it. He’s come up with a 1987 approach to it. And I think ‘Leave It to Jane’ has even wittier lyrics than ‘The Boys From Syracuse.’ And you know what? They’re both lovely family shows.

“Our approach isn’t that of summer stock musicals, where you have one or two weeks’ rehearsal and do the best you can. I did that for years in Dallas. We’re treating both these shows like little gems to be carefully polished. They are professional productions. Five hundred people tried out; nine are UCLA students or graduates, but they’re in the shows only because they were the best.

“We have a number of well-known performers--Leila Martin, Michael Tucci, Matt Landers and Patty Tiffany, for example. None of them is as famous as our board of governors--yet! (Schaefer’s co-chair is Carol Burnett, and among those on the board are Lucille Ball, Carol Channing, Bonnie Franklin, Albert Hague, Shirley Jones, Lawrence Kasha, Michelle Lee, Peter Matz and Rita Moreno.)

“Neither show is a star vehicle,” Schaefer went on. “For our first summer we thought this seemed the right way to go. You can feel the energy of the cast. They can really sing! We’re not going to depend on electronics. There’s no reason to go to the theater and have a show that sounds like it was coming from your stereo.”

Before accepting the chairmanship at UCLA, Schaefer, a graduate of Lafayette College and the Yale Drama School, had had no professional connection with any educational institution. “I’ve found it very satisfying,” he said. “I think my presence at UCLA can be very helpful, now that there’s a major transition ahead.”

He was referring to the strong possibility that the department could become a separate school instead of remaining part of the School of Fine Arts, which includes the departments of architecture, dance and fine arts. “In terms of attracting financial support, we’ve always been a bit vague and amorphous. This would eliminate a lot of red tape.”

While acknowledging that taking on the direction of “Leave It to Jane” has been “a bigger push than I intended,” Schaefer, who is on the national board of the Directors Guild of America and is a member of the National Council for the Arts, doesn’t see his television career as being over.

“I would like to think I’m not finished yet,” said the 66-year-old Schaefer, who made his 1945 Broadway debut directing the famous “G.I. Hamlet.”

“And I do have a commitment to Katharine Hepburn (whom he directed in the TV movie ‘Mrs. Delafield Wants to Marry’) to do an original with her.”