In Stoneham, young company's risks play a major role

"There's one scene that doesn't quite exist yet," artistic director Weylin Symes acknowledged with a laugh. Still, he's confident that it will come together, and he enthusiastically proclaims the libretto "one of the best things that has crossed my desk."

The last-minute tinkering is hardly unusual for a new musical, of course -- after all, Boston's theaters once served as exactly this kind of lab setting on the now-vanished pre-Broadway tryout circuit. But it also reflects a certain willingness to fly loose and take a few calculated risks that seems typical of the way the Stoneham Theatre has worked to get off the ground.

Once a vaudeville house, then a movie palace, the Stoneham Theatre had fallen into seedy decline by the 1980s; for a while, it was used to store mattresses. By the time the Symes family -- longtime Stoneham residents, politicos, and developers -- decided to transform it into a working regional theater, Weylin Symes says, "it was pretty much just four walls and not even the roof."

The Symes family bought the building in 1999 and more or less gutted what was left, replacing the electrical and heating systems, refurbishing the 350 seats, and completely rebuilding the stage. Then, in December 2000, they turned it over to the new not-for-profit entity known as the Stoneham Theatre, with Weylin Symes on the board. He's candid about the family connection, but he also comes with a background in acting and direction.

He's also candid about the big break the Stoneham Theatre gets from the Symes family: It occupies the building rent-free, which is a great help to a new theater company, but not in itself enough to guarantee financial success.

So Weylin Symes and producing director Troy Siebels, who came to Stoneham in the summer of 2001, have worked with their staff to build the theater's audience, artistic aspirations, and financial stability. "The first year, we lost $180,000," Symes says. "The second year, we paid back 120,000 of that. Now we're in our third year, and . . . the road isn't where it was yesterday."

Indeed it isn't. With the third season, Symes and Siebels say, they're moving closer to achieving what they've felt their mission was all along: to present new and interesting work to new and interested audiences.

"This season is quite emblematic of what we want to be," Symes says. "There's a lot of new work, and yet there's a lot that's very accessible."

Symes counts "The Girl in the Frame," a pop-inflected musical written by Jeremy Desmon, as both new and accessible. "We're overcoming the stigma that `new play' means `avant-garde,' " he says. "We've been using this term `new favorites' " -- works that haven't been seen but can please mainstream audiences. This season's opening show, "Pete `n' Keely," was that kind of accessible novelty, he says.

"Stones in His Pockets," which closes today, is another. Rounding out the season, Stoneham plans to present "Wait Until Dark," the New England premieres of Tony winner Richard Greenberg's "The Dazzle" and the North End family drama "The Sweepers," the Massachusetts premiere of "Lizzie Borden: The Musical," and that hardy perennial, "A Christmas Carol."

"Sheer familiarity is always the key," Symes says, "whether with the name, the playwright, or the actor." But he and Siebels also hope that, as they build loyal audiences, those audiences will follow them into less familiar terrain.

"A lot of theaters are dealing with a difficult economy by going back to the tried and true," Siebels says. "We chose not to take that route." And their decision to mount new works like "Girl," he says, "is generating more buzz, more interest and excitement. . . . I don't know if it'll sell as many tickets as `Annie' would, but I think it could do more for the theater in the long run." In another mark of support for this new work, Stoneham is using the Nov. 8 performance of "Girl" to anchor its third anniversary gala.

Siebels wouldn't rule out doing "Annie" or "The Sound of Music," he says, "if there were a reason to do it. . . . But if the reason to do it is to think it'll attract a mass audience, that's not our strategy."

They did do "Man of La Mancha" and "The Odd Couple" last season -- in part, Symes says, to draw in audiences that don't normally go to any theater. "We do a production like `Man of La Mancha' and then see if we can encourage people to come in," he says. And, in fact, "La Mancha" has been the best-selling show so far, and one that probably did bring in new theatergoers. That strategy has also led Stoneham to book a lot of concerts, particularly by jazz artists, in hopes of building an audience of music lovers who might then return for a musical and even, eventually, for a straight play.

So far, the production that has attracted the most attention has been last season's "Marathon," for which the playwright Israel Horovitz adapted Edoardo Erba's Italian play about two runners. The play got strong reviews, moved into Boston -- and established a relationship between Stoneham and Horovitz that, this season, led to a joint production. "Stones in His Pockets" opened at Horovitz's Gloucester Stage Company before playing in Stoneham; the two theaters were able to share production costs and, with the savings, pay the actors for an extra week of rehearsal time. The theater operates under a "small professional theater" agreement with the Actors' Equity Association.

While working on "Marathon," Horovitz said in a phone interview, "a relationship developed, and I said, `If only Boston theaters could cooperate and collaborate!' It's so silly -- it's like little old ladies living in separate houses, paying separate rent. Why can't they get together?"

Both theaters proclaim themselves pleased with the results and hope to do more together, and Horovitz says he's impressed with Stoneham's growth. He also doesn't worry about the competition. "I always thought the best thing that could ever happen to a theater is to have somebody else open another theater next door," Horovitz says. Then each theater becomes "part of a theater neighborhood. It just needs that."

But Boston sometimes seems to resist that idea, and that may be a problem for Stoneham. New York director Robert Jay Cronin enjoyed his stint directing "Pete `n' Keely" here, he says, and found Stoneham "a wonderful theater to work at; it was very, very well run." But he was "disappointed," he says, that more people didn't come from downtown.

"In a community as small as the Boston theater community, the feeling I got was that that community is so tight that they're not very open to something new, another company coming in," Cronin says. "And that's very strange for me. In New York City, where I live, it's all about nurturing, developing theater. And when a new theater comes up -- excellent, that's another opportunity for people to see good theater."

Still, the Stoneham people remain optimistic. They're also pleased to have received strong support from Stoneham businesses that see the theater as a way of attracting traffic and building community -- something that has also attracted the notice of the Arts and Business Council of Greater Boston.

The council this year gave the Stoneham Theatre one of nine Arts Excellence Awards, says executive director Celeste Wilson, because "the way that the theater germinated, it was very community-driven." She also applauds the "very risky" decision to do a lot of new work and says it "could be very exciting" for the region to have another theater consistently promoting new work.

It's also a pretty open-ended mission. But, Siebels says, there's one thing he knows they won't do, even though, given the theater's past, they get asked about it all the time: They won't show movies.

"With the incredible diversity that we do, the one thing that it shares," Siebels says, "is that it's all live. And intimate live. You're seeing a live person."

And, this week, a live person (or four) performing work that's never been seen before.

Louise Kennedy can be reached at kennedy@globe.com.