Some critics declared Signature’s “Passion” superior to Broadway’s. Since then, Schaeffer founded Signature Theatre in Arlington, Va., and directed inventive, well-received productions of Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd,” “Assassins” and “Into the Woods,” among others. Back in 1989, Schaeffer mounted a community-theater production of Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park With George.” Needing clarification on a few points, he wrote to Sondheim, who was impressed enough by Schaeffer’s ideas to write back. well, we won’t know how this one will end until “Witches,” now in previews, opens July 18.īut we do know how it begins. How Schaeffer, 37, progressed from a suburban Washington theater seating fewer than 150 people to the most expensive production of Mackintosh’s career (nearly $7 million) is the kind of success story Broadway tunesmiths used to write musicals about: A blond, boyish and charming young man from nowhere (Fleetwood, Pa., actually) works hard and wins friends in high places one of those friends gives him a big break, and on opening night. “If is a big success, people will realize on a large scale what some people have already realized,” Mackintosh says, “that Eric Schaeffer is one of the most original and talented directors working-not only in America, but anywhere.” Now, with “Witches,” he is cementing his relationship with the man who, next to God, is the most important figure in contemporary musicals: Cameron Mackintosh, the producer behind “Cats,” “Les Miserables,” “The Phantom of the Opera” and “Miss Saigon.” He staged the Sondheim revue “Putting It Together,” starring Carol Burnett, for Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum and Broadway. Over the past decade, Schaeffer turned a tiny suburban company he co-founded with a friend and $500 into a nationally recognized showcase for the musicals of Stephen Sondheim-and an incubator for new works. “It’s kind of a cross between Liberace and Hugh Hefner. It’s the home of Darryl Van Horne, the engaging devil who’s a lead character in the new musical “The Witches of Eastwick,” which Schaeffer is directing.
He’s admiring a wall-high hunk of scenery on wheels, bright cherry red-red wallpaper, red velour plush and an infinite number of red sequins. Original productions of many of the musical theater’s most beloved classics have played here: “Oklahoma!,” “The King and I,” “42nd Street,” “Sweeney Todd,” “A Chorus Line.”īackstage in the empty theater on a Sunday morning, Eric Schaeffer is taken by a different kind of magnificence. The Theatre Royal Drury Lane is the crown jewel of this city’s West End theater district, an impressively ornate auditorium that boasts a distinguished, centuries-old history.
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