Some of the treasures of the Washington theater community aren’t actually in Washington. If you mention Washington to theater buffs around the country (or even around the world), two or three theaters would come to mind, and one of them would be Signature Theatre.

Where is Signature? After years performing first in a converted school library below Arlington Heights and then in a converted bumper-plating shop along Four Mile Run, Signature now occupies the upper floors of a new building that is the focal point of the expansion of Shirlington, a two-block long shopping, restaurant, hotel and entertainment complex just three miles beyond the 14th Street Bridge at Interstate 395’s Exit 6.

This 15-year-old theater company headed by Artistic Director Eric Schaeffer mounts marvelous musicals, interesting dramas and entertaining comedies. Musicals are what it is best known for, and this spring is a happy time to discover why, because Signature is celebrating the works of John Kander and Fred Ebb – the team who wrote the scores for “Cabaret,” “Chicago” and a host of other Broadway musicals. The Kander and Ebb Celebration includes new productions of three of their musicals, including the rarely seen “The Happy Time.”

Written in the 1960s, it is set in the 1920s when a globe-traveling photographer returns to his boyhood home in a small Canadian town to visit his family, his godson and the school teacher with whom he fell in love years before. Filled with bright, tuneful up-tempo numbers as well as melodic love songs, the piece is a charm show with just a hint of the biting touch that mark the musicals of Kander and Ebb.

Signature gives the musical a lovely, intimate production in the smaller of the two theaters in its new building, the 110-seat house called “The ARK” (actually the initials of one of the contributors who made the space possible, Arlene R. Kogod.) A three-piece combo sits next to a small thrust stage backed by a collage of picture frames onto which the photos taken by the hero are projected.

Since Signature began producing musicals in an 87-seat space in 1991 with a production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd” that became an instant must see for every musical theater lover in the Washington area, Signature has been noted for the opportunity to see musicals sung in small enough spaces that you are, as the saying goes, up close and personal with the singers.

Some musicals still do require the use of microphones. (Who would expect a rock musical like “Hedwig and the Magic Inch” to be done without them?) From time to time, however, it is a real pleasure to have no mechanical device between the actor’s throat and your ear.

Such is the case with “The Happy Time.” When Michael Minarik (the photographer) sings the lovely title song or joins with Carrie A. Johnson (the teacher) in the exceptionally beautiful “Seeing Things,” or when 12-year-old Jace Casey (the godson) plaintively pleads “Please Stay” or David Margulies leads “The Life of the Party,” you fall under the spell that only live musical theater can cast.

Three of Kander and Ebb’s songs that weren’t in the original Broadway version have been used here, including a marvelous duet rendered by Broadway veteran George Divorsky and Signature regular Tracy Lynn Olivera, which offers conclusive proof that, at Signature, even the smaller roles are given delightful performances.

Of course, with a theater of this size, the total cast is a bit smaller than it once was. On Broadway the show had nearly 50 in the cast, while here it has a thoroughly sufficient (and highly talented) 17. The chorus girls the godson sneaks off to see at a vaudeville theater in Act 1 are “The Four Angels” here, not “The Six Angels” of the original.

This is the second of the three Kander and Ebb musicals Signature presents this spring. The other two are being done in the larger, 250-seat theater on the other side of the lobby, called “The MAX” for contributor Maxine Isaacs. The celebration began with a visually striking, musically smashing production of their Tony Award-winning dark musical “Kiss of the Spider Woman.” It continues later this month with a highly anticipated production of “The Visit,” which will star two Broadway stars of magnitude, George Hearn, who holds Tony Awards as both best leading actor (the original Albin in “La Cage aux Folles”) and best supporting actor (for “Sunset Boulevard”); and Chita Rivera, who was the original Anita in “West Side Story” in 1957 and went on to star in “Bye Bye Birdie” and Kander and Ebb’s “Chicago,” “The Rink” and “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” earning her two Tony’s.

Awards aren’t a stranger to Signature. Over the years, works on their stages have drawn 212 Helen Hayes Award nominations, winning 54 times. This year again they have been nominated in seven categories, including outstanding musical of the year for last summer’s production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Assassins.”

Sondheim musicals have been a trademark for Signature. In fact, last summer’s “Assassins” was the second production of that musical the company mounted. Their earlier production was the winner of the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Musical in 1993 – one of six such awards they’ve garnered in 15 years. In all, Signature has mounted a dozen of Sondheim’s musicals as well as musicals by most of the major names in musical theater, including Rogers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, Dempsey and Rowe, Schmidt and Jones, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Stephen Schwartz and Michael John LaChiusa.

Right now, the concentration is on Kander and Ebb. The team started out in 1965 with the show that made a star of Liza Minelli, “Flora, The Red Menace,” and kept writing hit after hit (and a few that weren’t quite hits) until Fred Ebb died in 2004. John Kander decided that, rather than finding a new lyricist with whom to write, he would concentrate on finishing the projects he and his partner had begun. One of those projects was “Curtains,” a fun musical comedy murder mystery that is currently running on Broadway. Another was “The Visit” which they had been developing with Terrence McNally the playwright with whom they wrote “Kiss of the Spider Woman” and “The Rink.” It had originally been written as a vehicle for Angela Lansbury’s return to Broadway, but she had to withdraw from the project because of her husband’s health. Later, it was produced in Chicago with Chita Rivera in the starring role. Now Kander, along with McNally, director Frank Galati and choreographer Ann Reinking, will present the show as the final offering of Signature’s Kander and Ebb celebration.

The first time Signature produced a Kander and Ebb show it was “Cabaret.” That was 1995, and Kander and Ebb must have liked what was done. When they wanted to rework their musical “The Rink,” they did so at Signature. Then, when they had a new musical to try out, they premiered “Over and Over” at Signature with Broadway legend the late Dorothy Loudon heading the cast.

At the time that “Over and Over” was in rehearsals in 1998, I interviewed John Kander for the sadly now-defunct Show Music Magazine. He told me that he wanted to work at Signature because it is a place “where you can work with a free heart. Where everyone feels free to question, to suggest, to try. It is – not to put too mawkish a face on it – why I went into this business in the first place.”

He’s not the first to discover that Signature is a special place, nor will he be the last. Now would be a happy time for more of Washington’s theatergoers to discover just how special it can be.

Signature Sends Show To Broadway
Few shows produced in regional theaters around the country transfer directly to Broadway. Arena Stage’s “The Great White Hope” was the first one ever, and that was 1968. The latest to pull off that rare accomplishment will be Signature Theatre’s production of “Glory Days,” a contemporary coming of age story that finds four former buddies seeing each other for the first time since they graduated from high school one year ago. The one act musical takes place in the bleachers of the high school’s football field and features a pop-rock score of 15 songs written by two Montgomery County friends, James Gardiner and Nick Blaemire, who are both in their early 20s. Signature’s Eric Schaeffer directed the premiere at Signature in January with a cast of four (Stephen Booth, Andrew C. Call, Adam Halpin and Jessie JP Johnson), all of whom will repeat their roles when the show opens at the Circle on the Square theatre on New York’s West 50th Street on May 6. Schaeffer again directs with the original design team repeating their work as well.

Signature Theatre
4200 Campbell Ave.
Arlington, VA 22206
703-820-9771
Tickets range in price from $38 to $76

Brad Hathaway is the editor/reviewer for Potomac Stages, a website and e-mail service covering theater in Washington, Maryland and Virginia (www.PotomacStages.com). He has covered theater for Theatre.Com, Musical Stages Online, The Connection Newspapers and such magazines as Show Music, The Sondheim Review and American Theatre. He and his wife live on Capitol Hill. He can be reached at Brad@PotomacStages.com.