PATRICIA BIRCH ON BROADWAY'S SEESAW.

It could be the sound of performing seals flopping toward the exit. But no, flop, flop, flop is the noise of new shows closing prematurely. It's been a rough season for musicals: Parade, Band in Berlin, Marlene (about Dietrich, who incidentally was once banned from Berlin for her staunch adherence to democracy)--all closed, although Sian Phillips, star of Marlene, was praised and nominated for a Tony. Fascinatin' Rhythm and Exactly Like You earned only lukewarm reviews. Annie Get Your Gun, Fosse, and You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown didn't get raves either, yet these shows and Parade received Tonys in various categories. So did Martin Short for Little Me, which closed in February.

It so happens that Patricia Birch, the veteran choreographer-director who has won two Emmys and been nominated for four Tonys, was involved in Parade, Band in Berlin, and Exactly Like You. She didn't win a Tony this time, but she did win the Astaire Award for Best Choreographer. (Admirers of Parade were vindicated when Alfred Uhry earned a Tony for his book.)

Birch, who has experienced both hits and flops, likes to take on oddball projects rather than the more conventional Broadway musical. In common with a number of women in the theater--Graciela Daniele, Kathleen Marshall, and Susan Stroman come to mind--she alternates between collaborating and being both director and choreographer. "I'm sort of a maverick," she says--a versatile one at that. It's taken her from such assignments as Candide, directed by Hal Prince, to Elvis: A Multi-Media Celebration. It is also reflected in her dance roots. Once a soloist with the Martha Graham Dance Company, she switched to Broadway early on to play the gamine role of Anybodys in West Side Story.

For Birch, each project determines whether to direct as well as choreograph: "I think codirecting or just choreographing is terrific, but it's sometimes what drives choreographers to directing. You do a lot of stuff that people feel a director has done or you do it with them so closely you end up thinking, Well, maybe I should direct. But it's not just about telling people where to go and what to do. It's the whole gestalt of a piece--a huge thing. And occasionally that becomes a cautionary tale because you have to be responsible for those words, and, as we know, one word can send a show screaming in some other direction. We choreographers are visual people. I tend to look first as a choreographer would. So, when directing, I try to make myself very attentive to the spoken word."

On the other hand, Birch adds, "Staging, as in staged by, is not directing. It has a lot to do with it, but in the final analysis staging, much as we would love to think so sometimes, does not steer the ship. In general, directing a musical couldn't be more different from concert dance, where you have an idea and, yes, you're the one seeing it through, realizing it."

Parade is an example of what a subtle and happy situation working with another director can be: "It was a total collaboration with Hal Prince," she says. "You don't know where one of us stopped and the other began." The show was based on an infamous miscarriage of justice, the lynching of Leo Frank for a murder he didn't commit. One of the most inventive numbers Birch choreographed was a scene, a sort of flashback, where Frank dances around innocently with three girls in his factory, one of whom was the victim. Says Birch, "I loved doing that number with him and the three girls because it was so well set up. I was searching for how to do it, and I came in one morning and said to Hal, `I have an idea. It's going to be about children's games and he [Frank, played by Brent Carver] is not going to touch any of those girls.' And Hal said, `Go for it,' because the song and the moment were absolutely right. The setup is so important," Birch says. "As in this case, the information that makes a number should be signaled five or ten minutes before it starts. It's that kind of thing that makes it fly."

Band in Berlin, set during World War II, was codirected with Susan Feldman. Birch describes it as "a sort of tone poem. I'm very comfortable with dramatic pieces, but this was a more lyric evening, though a couple of critics reduced it to `a slide show with music.'" From The Comedian Harmonists and the war years, she switched to the lighthearted Exactly Like You, which closed in May. The plot concerns four couples at odds with each other and is set in a courtroom where the judge, lawyers, and jurors are also the instrumentalists playing the music, seated behind their benches and jury box. "It was just a romp," she says, "which I did first at the Goodspeed Opera House." A sung-through show, the dialogue is ripe with old mother-in-law jokes and corny plot twists, yet still has zest aided by Birch's zany touch. One comic pas de deux, "Rio," a fiesta fiasco performed by Edward Staudenmayer and Michael McGrath, has McGrath hamming it up a la Carmen Miranda; it could have easily gone astray, but didn't because of Birch's astute timing and theater sense.

Last year she worked with Richard Peaslee and Adrian Mitchell on a musical version of The Snow Queen, based on the Andersen fairy tale. "It had a limited run at the Arts Theatre in London" says Birch. "We had lots of young dancers in it. It may be at the American Music Festival next year--it's a show that's going to have a future. Meantime, I'm working on a couple of dance projects. I'm not committed to always being a director-choreographer. Sometimes it's nice to have a collaborator or codirector there with you; otherwise you're talking to yourself the whole time."

Hilary Ostlere is a senior editor of Dance Magazine.