OF LOVE AND WAR WITH 'MARTIN GUERRE' CREATORS BOUBLIL AND SCHONBERG BATTLE TO KEEP BIG STORY SMALL.

Byline: Reed Johnson Staff Writer

Ever since they busted out of Euro-pop obscurity to become certified Broadway cash cows, Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg have been labeled as guys who like to think big.

Big-budget musicals with big casts. Big sets crammed with barricades, scything helicopters and 12-foot statues of Ho Chi Minh. Bigger-than-life characters projecting big, heart-swelling melodies.

And, of course, big themes like, oh, the redemption of the human soul, the fall of Saigon and the political upheavals of 19th-century France.

So it comes as a mild surprise to hear Connall Morrison describe Boublil and Schonberg, authors of ``Les Miserables'' and ``Miss Saigon'' - two of the top-grossing musicals of all time - as closet minimalists who are most concerned with mundane matters of the human heart.

``They're two Frenchman. They want to write about love,'' says Morrison, the Irish director who guided the current production of Boublil and Schonberg's latest opus, ``Martin Guerre,'' which opens Wednesday night at the Ahmanson Theatre.

Indeed, both Boublil and Schonberg insist that with ``Martin Guerre'' they were attempting to downsize the imperial scale of their two previous blockbusters. In musicalizing the oft-told legend of a 16th-century French soldier who returns home claiming to be another man, the authors say they wanted to tell an intimate love story that wouldn't be upstaged by the set design.

In other words, no Cadillacs. No replicas of 1840s Paris slums. Just your basic Gallic menage a trois and a bunch of confused peasants facing a moral dilemma bigger than themselves.

``This is something a lot of the critics don't seem to understand,'' Schonberg says, a bit testily, speaking by phone from France. ``We're not trying to rewrite 'Les Miz.' After 'Miss Saigon,' we didn't want to do another big literary work of the French patrimony.''

Schonberg's frustration is understandable, given the fits and starts that have plagued ``Martin Guerre's'' long odyssey from the drawing board to London's West End and finally to the current North American tour, which will wrap up in April following its L.A. engagement.

Although the authors and producer Cameron Mackintosh originally had hoped to take ``Martin Guerre'' to Broadway this spring, they decided to pull the plug on the show, ostensibly because they were unable to secure a ``midsize'' Broadway house such as the 1,400-seat St. James.

``The decision was made to close the show in L.A. rather than going in the wrong theater,'' says Boublil, on the line from London. `` 'Martin Guerre' is not that kind of show that you just go anywhere. You have to create its own life.''

In fact, ``Martin Guerre'' has continually had to fight the impression that it was a musical dead on arrival.

That perception acquired new steam during the tour's December stop in the nation's capital, where the Washington Post's theater critic pronounced it ``theatrically inert.''

The subsequent decision not to take ``Martin Guerre'' to New York has been seen as a blow to the megabucks clout and insider connections of producer Mackintosh, the Englishman who brought the world ``Cats,'' ``The Phantom of the Opera,'' and both ``Les Miz'' and ``Miss Saigon.''

Boublil takes a philosophical attitude about to the critical drubbing ``Martin Guerre'' has received from the likes of the Post and The New York Times. But he can't help speculating that some of the adverse reaction stems from resentment over the authors' decision to paint on a smaller canvas, after earning their reputations (and their millions) with splashier spectacles.

``It's something that I have to consider like a possibility, (that) people would only accept us as being either really popular or completely uncommercial,'' Boublil says. `` 'Martin Guerre' is somewhere in between.''

Touching on issues of identity, sexuality, religion and the role of society vs. the individual, the story of Martin Guerre is one of those peculiarly French narratives with a universal ring, like the Joan of Arc legend or the Dreyfus Affair.

The essential facts are these: During the 16th-century religious wars, a beautiful French peasant woman, Bertrande de Rols, announced that the man she'd claimed for the past three years as her husband, Martin Guerre, really was an impostor, a man from a nearby village named Arnaud du Thil. A trial was held in Toulouse, at which the real Martin Guerre turned up at the last minute to unmask Arnaud. The court sentenced Arnaud to death and ordered the chastened Bertrande to return to her real husband.

The incident didn't become legend until the chief trial judge, Jean de Coras, wrote a best-selling tell-all about it. The Martin Guerre story subsequently has inspired philosophical essays, poetry, plays and novels.

Outside France, it's probably best-known from ``The Return of Martin Guerre,'' Daniel Vigne's 1982 French feature film starring Gerard Depardieu. It was remade in 1993 as ``Sommersby,'' with Richard Gere and Jodie Foster, with the action transposed to the American South following the Civil War.

In some ways, the subject seemed tailor-made for Boublil and Schonberg, whose thoughtful and literate but broadly accessible shows occupy a groove between the glossy romanticism of Andrew Lloyd Webber and the highbrow angst of Stephen Sondheim.

After taking their initial cues from the French movie, Boublil and Schonberg decided they didn't want to make their musical into a mystery, in which the ersatz Martin Guerre's true identity isn't revealed until the end.

``We did not want to make a suspense musical, (because) why would you go and see it again then?'' Boublil reasons. What's more, he says, the theater audience immediately knows that Arnaud isn't Martin Guerre because the characters are played by different actors.

Instead, the authors wanted to focus on the relationship between Arnaud and Bertrande, and to examine the depth of Bertrande's complicity in pretending that Arnaud is Martin, his best friend.

``There must be something in every man's mind, like probably he would like to be in his best friend's woman's bed without anyone knowing it's him,'' Boublil says. ``That problem of identity, and hidden identity, and who you are and who you'd like to be, and who you are living with or who you would like to live with, and the truth between who you can be and who you are only able to be, the Martin Guerre story kind of embodies all of that.''

Director Morrison agrees that the story's sexual frisson is part of what makes ``Martin Guerre'' tick.

``It's slightly 'Romeo and Juliet,' in that there's something slightly verboten between (the two main characters) that sort of adds to the potency,'' he says.

Originally budgeted at $6 million, the show opened in London's West End in July, 1996, to decidedly mixed notices from the national press (``Wit-free and relentlessly predictable'' - Daily Telegraph). Still, after the show was briefly shut down and reworked, it ran for 700 performances and captured Britain's Olivier Award for Best New Musical.

But its authors still felt that ``Martin Guerre'' was a small musical trapped inside a big musical's body.

``It's very difficult to write on this scale,'' Schonberg says. ``It's like running a mile. You want to maintain your pace so you don't run out of oxygen.''

Working closely with the tenacious Mackintosh, they decided to remount the show at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds, England, whose artistic director, Jude Kelly, is regarded as one of Britain's most talented and innovative young theater artists.

``Jude Kelly thought we had not finished our work,'' Boublil says, ``and that's when we all got together, (set designer) John Napier, the new team who did the new show.''

With a revamped libretto, several new songs, additional lyrics by Boublil and Stephen Clark, a new director (Morrison) and a cast trimmed to 24, this leaner ``Martin Guerre'' was deemed worthy of hopping the pond to North America. It launched its current tour at Minneapolis' 1,400-seat Guthrie Theatre last September before moving on to Detroit; Washington, D.C.; Seattle; and the Ahmanson.

Yet, however it fares in Los Angeles, its artistic team won't feel its work is done until ``Martin Guerre'' marches into the Manhattan promised land.

After that, says Boublil, who knows? Schonberg is working on an adaptation of ``Wuthering Heights'' for the English National Ballet, but the duo aren't previewing any future projects.

``When we did 'Les Miz,' it happened to be very different than anything else that existed, and we have changed something in the way that musical theater has been done since,'' Boublil says. ``And it's exciting to think that you can still do that - maybe.''

The Facts

--What: ``Martin Guerre.''

--Where: Ahmanson Theatre, Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown.

--When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Feb. 23 through April 8.

--Tickets: $15 to $70. Call [phone].

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) One big love

Boublil-Schonberg musical 'Martin Guerre' trades giant sets for intimate story

(2) Father Dominic (John Herrera), center, presides over the wedding of Bertrande (Erin Dilly) and the real Martin Guerre (Hugh Panaro).

(3) Arnaud du Thil (Stephen R. Buntrock) returns from battle as Martin Guerre, although his true identity is not revealed until years later, in the epic story ``Martin Guerre.''

(4) "We're not trying to rewrite 'Les Miz.' After 'Miss Saigon,' we didn't want to do another big literary work ..." says Claude-Michel Schonberg, right with co-creator Alain Boublil.

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer