Dance theater.

The Broadway archives for 2003 will record that at the end of the year, with the revival of Wonderful Town, Kathleen Marshall got a promotion. For the very first time, the last line of the Playbill read, "Directed and Choreographed by Kathleen Marshall." But sitting in the Al Hirschfeld Theatre ten days before the opening and three days after a querulous article in The New York Times about the show's skimpy advance, the newly minted director-choreographer appeared utterly unfazed by the momentousness of it all.

For one thing, it still seemed a little unreal. "I barely think of myself as a director," she said, "and here I am--I can't believe I'm actually in charge." For another, it all seemed so familiar. "The process of putting a show together is the same whether you happen to be here on 45th Sheet or in college or at one of the regional theaters all across the country."

But just when you begin to worry that she may be a little too calm, she adds in her matter-of-fact way, "It just happens to be on a bigger scale with a little more at stake."

Well, yes. There's her career, for one thing. And a $5 million investment. But there may be even more on the line than she thinks. Because the fate of Wonderful Town could help resolve a couple of issues important to the future of Broadway.

THIS PRODUCTION is based on the one Marshall directed and choreographed for "Encores!," the semi-staged, script-in-hand series that resuscitates failed or forgotten musicals (not that the Tony-winning Wonderful Town, based on My Sister Eileen, was exactly obscure). Now in its eleventh season, "Encores!" has a terrific track record--but only one Broadway transfer, Chicago, to lend it credibility as a research-and-development arm for the commercial theater. Everyone connected with it, including Marshall, who was its artistic director and is now its director-in-residence, insists that the series was never intended to be any such thing, and that its core mission--to reconstruct as accurately as possible valuable scores that might otherwise go unheard--is completely at odds with the economic realities of Broadway. But "Encores!" audiences can't help wondering why, when a lost gem is rediscovered, it promptly gets lost again.

"Encores!" did Wonderful Town, with its winning score by Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green, four years ago. It proved a smashing success--and a particular triumph for Donna Murphy, who had won both her Tonys in long skirts (in 1994 for Passion and in 1996 for The King and I) and who here flashed both her legs and her sense of humor as the wisecracking would-be writer Ruth. If this Broadway reprise succeeds, it's nice to think other commercial producers will venture into "Encores!" territory in search of oldies but goodies.

If it fails to recoup its investment, however, it will join too many other shows from the '40s and '50s that were revived in the last decade but failed to find an audience. The fear, for those of us who cherish this all-American genre, is that it will hasten the day when Broadway producers finally just give up on classic and semiclassic book-driven musicals in which a grown-up boy meets a grown-up girl and they overcome some obstacle or other before hooking up and singing the finale--unaccompanied by puppets or hydraulic sets or twenty pairs of tapping feet.

MARSHALL FIRMLY believes that audiences "don't need bells and whistles." She's found, she said, "that if they're given a good story and a compelling score performed by good actors, that's a satisfying evening." Of course, she also seems to have an intrinsically upbeat outlook. She's able to see assets where others might see problems. For example, the twenty-four-piece orchestra for Wonderful Town takes up most of the stage's playing area, just as it did at "Encores!" "It's a show about so many entrances and exits," she said. "I like that it's thrust forward, close to the audience. And it's about two small-town girls who come to the big city and turn the big city into a small town. Putting the orchestra onstage helps populate the stage--it gives you a sense of the city, where somebody's always above you and below you in your apartment, twenty-four hours a day."

Marshall works wonders in the shallow oblong that remains of the stage, especially in the opening number, which introduces the audience to the painters, actors, and Martha Graham types who will be Ruth and Eileen's neighbors in Greenwich Village. "These dancers are all actors," she said. "It's what's most important for this show. There are some technical things. But it's not like Movin' Out, where it's really incredibly difficult. Here, the dancers have to transform themselves from being earnest artists to Brazilian naval cadets to Irish policemen."

THE CADETS do a Copacabana-style conga, and the cops do a wicked Riverdance parody--instantly recognizable. "There are a lot of people who can come up with really unusual steps," Marshall said. "But choreography makes the most impact when there's an idea behind it. I've learned that if the idea is right, the steps follow. You can have a lot of technique and a lot of brilliant steps. But if there's no emotion behind it, it can be empty. It's emotion that stops shows."

Asked whether she'd go back to choreographing shows for other directors, she said, "Some big shows actually benefit from having two voices." She cited Kiss Me, Kate, which she choreographed under Michael Blakemore's direction. "We worked well together," she said, "but we were also very busy inside our own rooms attending to our own tasks."

As she spoke at the Hirschfeld, Marshall's choreography could also be seen a few blocks uptown at the Virginia, in Little Shop of Horrors. Those steps were created not for an ensemble of sixteen but for the three women who act as the show's Greek chorus (if you can buy a Greek chorus in pleated skirts and bobby sox). Her job, she said, was "to distill the dancing to what they can do at the same time that they're singing this really complicated three-part harmony."

She's not sorry that there wasn't more for her to do. "There should be no more dance in Little Shop than there is," she said. "The fact that every song is danceable doesn't mean that everything should be expanded. You can also choke a show with too much dance." Hmmm. Sounds like there's a director in the house.

Broadway columnist Sylviane Gold has written about theater for The Boston Phoenix, The Wall Street Journal, Newsday, and The New York Times.