
DATE: Wednesday, October 1, 1997            TAG: 9710010032

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  192 lines

MEET THE MAN BEHIND THE MUSICALS JEFF MEREDITH LEFT SUCCESSFUL CAREER IN NEW YORK TO FORM THEATER COMPANY

THE MUSIC never stops for the little theater company that could.

In six years, it has offered Hampton Roads the brightest of Broadway's musicals - ``Annie Get Your Gun,'' ``South Pacific,'' ``The King and I,'' ``Evita,'' ``Can Can,'' ``A Little Night Music,'' and on and on.

Along the way, it has grown from 359 subscribers to 2,500, and a budget of more than $750,000 a year.

But while the troupe prides itself on sticking to tradition, musically, it enters its seventh season with something new. The old Commonwealth Musical Stage is now Virginia Musical Theater - a moniker that more clearly defines both its existence and its purpose.

The real music man behind it all is Jeff Meredith, the producing director who, at the moment, is directing a new Nellie Forbush to wash that man right out of her hair in ``South Pacific.''

``The new name more clearly defines who we are and what we do,'' Meredith said, taking time out from rehearsal for Friday's opening at Virginia Beach Pavilion Theater. ``People were always confused by the `Commonwealth' title. Our mission is to preserve the best of American musical theater, but our primary goal is simply to entertain. That, after all, is what live theater means. It's participatory and the main participant is the audience. Here, the audience is as much a part of the show as the performers. It's a give and take.''

Meredith, who will be 50 this year, still has the cool, clear look of impetuous youth but with the risk-taking of a long-term theatrical gambler. His quite intriguing career has gone from a professional debut, at age 12 in Los Angeles, through academic training from Richmond to New York and London, and through a tap-dancing career on Broadway and a business career with the Metropolitan Opera to the present decade as founder, producer and director of a theatrical company.

``I was always a risk taker,'' he confirmed. ``Whenever things got safe, I'd try something else, and the lure was always back here - back to Hampton Roads. Something was always calling me back here.''

His father was with the Atomic Energy Commission, which meant that the family moved about the world a great deal. His show biz entry came, quite by chance, when his mother took him to an audition for ``Auntie Mame'' starring Greer Garson in Los Angeles. He was age 12 and he got the role of young Patrick Dennis. Promptly, his name was changed from Hugh Washington Williams IV to the name his agent chose - Jeff Meredith.

``My parents were not show business-oriented but they were always supportive,'' he said.

Greer Garson, the legendary MGM movie star who won an Oscar for ``Mrs. Miniver,'' became ``Auntie Greer.'' They stayed in contact until her death last year. Each year, she sent him a Christmas gift and, in 1978 he spent a week at her ranch near Santa Fe. ``She was a great star, a great lady and a life-long influence,'' he said.

With his father retiring in Norfolk, this city became home, but he always had his eye on Broadway. Graduating from high school at an early 16 and college at just 19, he got a master's degree in theater from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, but, still, the theater itself beckoned. ``Most of my professors hadn't really performed. I felt I was getting a good education in theater history, but that wasn't what I really wanted.''

He received a Ford Foundation grant to study at the Royal Academy in London but used only one of the two years provided by the fellowship.

``We had 17-year-old people in my classes who had never been on stage,'' he said. ``That seemed like old age to me. They were busy teaching technique but I wanted the experience of performing.''

He studied dance, but found that tap was his thing, not ballet. ``I was much too athletic and too non-disciplined for ballet,'' he remembered. ``Tap was a natural for me.''

As in the show biz fables, he took the bus to New York and got off at the Port Authority, not knowing a soul in the city. He checked into the YMCA and began making the auditioning rounds. Two weeks later, he had a job on Broadway, tapping in ``No, No, Nanette.''

``It was a revival of tap dancing and there just weren't many people who could tap,'' he explained modestly.

He followed with dance roles in ``Irene'' with Debbie Reynolds and ``Applause'' with Lauren Bacall but, then, a surprising thing happened. ``You work all your life to do Broadway and then one day you wake up and say `I don't like to do this.' After awhile, appearing in a long-running hit show becomes maintenance, not performance. It's one of the only jobs in the world that is exactly the same every day. You can never have a late lunch. It's entirely restrictive. I began to realize that what I loved was the creative process.''

The lure, yet again, was to Norfolk where for three years he directed the Tidewater Dinner Theater. When he arrived, the theater was in debt. When he left, it had become an Equity, union theater. He directed Anne Frances, Dana Andrews, Imogene Coca and Cybill Shepherd in local productions.

In 1982, he explored the idea of starting a professional musical theater. ``I went around to business people,'' he remembers. ``They were supportive but dismissive. Someone told me, bluntly, `You know nothing about the business end.' I had to admit, it was true. To have a vision is not enough. Theater is a business.''

He headed for the Metropolitan Opera in New York. ``I told them I wanted a job to learn the business of theater and I didn't care what the job was. They put me on as a filing clerk. I worked my way up. I observed and I absorbed everything - like a sponge. I got to work with Franco Zefirelli on his new production of `La boheme.' I got to work everywhere.''

Fate struck again when Mikhail Baryshnikov, then the head of American Ballet Theater, asked him if he'd take off 10 weeks to help market the summer tour.He was suddenly a successful marketer.

``Mischa (Baryshnikov) promptly told Beverly Sills and she asked me to come over and do promotion work for New York City Opera,'' Meredith remembers. ``As a result, suddenly I became an arts marketing manager. I gave up quite a good salary and all the benefits at the Met to take a new risk.''

In all, Meredith spent six years learning the business side of the arts. At the end of this run, he had 82 employees with offices in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. He decided to give it all up to come back to Virginia Beach and try to start a theatrical company.

``The turning point came when an old friend of mine, a fellow cast member back in `No, No, Nanette,' died of a heart attack. It was a time when you ask yourself `Is there anything in your life you haven't done that you really wanted?' My answer was quick. I hadn't started a theater company in Virginia.''

After six months of soliciting start-up funds, he got the message when, during a Sunday sermon, the minister said ``When you declare it so, it exists.''

The next day, he declared it so, and it existed. He had business cards printed that read ``Commonwealth Musical Stage.''

There was only a single donation of $1,000 but, in October of 1991, the first show opened: ``The Boyfriend.''

A number of trends favored the new company. There was a lack of musical theater in the area. At that time, Virginia Stage Company wasn't doing musicals. Chrysler Hall was going through a slump in the number of imported musicals. The dinner theater phenomenon had run its course.

And there, sitting like a lure, was the Pavilion Theater in Virginia Beach - dark most nights. ``It had almost 1,000 seats, a hydraulic orchestra pit and a stage larger than any on Broadway,'' Meredith recalled, with the same enthusiasm as when he first entered it.

For the first five years, he didn't take a salary.

``The spending is very frugal,'' he said. ``We have only three full-time employees. What people see is the show. We try to put all the money up on stage.''

In fact, it does something that is unusual for any arts group - 70 percent of its operating budget is paid for with ticket sales.

The budget for each show is about $200,000 with all performers paid. Actors from New York are imported for some lead roles.

Virginia Musical Theatre advertises in the New York trade papers a month before holding two days of auditions for each show. ``The word is out in New York that we're a favorable place to work,'' Meredith said. ``We get anywhere from 600 to 800 submissions for auditions. There's no problem in finding the right person for any role. The problem is whether we can afford them.''

He adds that ``the policy has been that we won't bring anyone in from New York if we can find a local performer who is as good. That happened, for example, in casting Tevye in `Fiddler on the Roof.' I saw 40 people in New York but found that David Springstead, right here, was better.''

The mixture of New York and local casting, though, has caused identity problems for the theater. To some ticketbuyers ``local'' means ``amateur.'' ``We have a wealth of talent here, and it should be used,'' Meredith said, ``but I'd change the schedule before I'd cast someone who wasn't right.''

He admits that ``directing a musical theater company locally is the most difficult thing I've ever done. This area is totally unpredictable. When all is said and done, I choose the shows. It's my responsibility. We've made a few mildly unusual choices, such as `Good News,' `A Little Night Music' and `The Most Happy Fella.' These titles were not pre-sold, but, then, nothing is. You'd think `Hello, Dolly,' `Fiddler on the Roof' and `South Pacific' are sure sellers, but you can't be sure. People, on the one hand want titles they know. They don't want to take chances on titles they don't know, but, then, if you schedule some titles too often, they'll say `I've seen that already' and not show up. You're damned if you do, and damned if you don't.''

But with subscriptions up and financial stability within reach, the newly christened Virginia Musical Theatre seems to be a local success story that mirrors its directors own history of risk taking.

Laughably, one of the main problems ticketbuyers complain about is that the other audience members want to sing along. ``With some shows,'' Meredith comments, ``people simply can't seem to resist singing along with the performers. We've had some subscribers ask to change their seats because they have a sing-along person near them.''

It's a good problem to have. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos

DAVID B. HOLLINGSWORTH/The Virginian-Pilot

Marissa Obsuna and Gregg Goodbrod...

Producing director Jeff Meredith

Graphic

WANT TO GO?

What: Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical ``South Pacific,''

presented by Virginia Musical Theater

Where: Virginia Beach Pavilion Theater

When: 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday; to be

repeated Oct. 10-12.

Tickets: $15 to $30, available at Ticketmaster, First Virginia