(Brel played its four-day run this past weekend. Today's article was originally scheduled for Friday; due to a reading period mix-up, it appears today. Though the writer regrets the delay, the article still remains the history of a remarkable drive for perfection.)

SINCE HE first saw Jacques Brel...--three times in one week--Guy Rochman has known that someday he would direct that musical revue. "It was a traumatic point in my life, the fall of '68... I was taking drivered and breaking up with my girl. I saw the show and fell in love with it." He wanted to sing 'Amsterdam', but he wanted to direct it even more. When the lights went up on Wednesday night's black tie Patron's Preview, Guy had brought off the first non-professional staging of Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.

Guy insists with the faith of a visionary that everything has run as scheduled since kickoff. But as he chronologues his show's history, fate clearly helped those who helped themselves. Simply to get the show was an act of will: "I wrote to 3W Productions who said yes, referring me to Blau and Shuman (who put Brel together) who said yes, referring me to their agent, Music Theatre International, who said no." Guy waited til February, meanwhile casting and then scrapping an all-women production of Waiting for Godot ("another long story"). In February the agency said yes, but backed down ten days later when Boston's professional production failed to close.

THEY SENT me catalogues for Oklahoma! and Bye-Bye Birdie, but it was Brel that I was going to do." Guy started calling people and soon discovered that the folks at MTI had legally committed themselves when they gave the earlier promise. "I sent them a telegram, a night letter about 150 words long, politely asking 'Why are you fucking us over? Why won't you let me do the show?'" The next morning Guy got his phone call, and he had won.

Guy grins triumphantly, as if to explain that that's of course how it would come out. Around him the Mather House dining room is converting to its night-time role: a small forest of music stands has popped up; guitar amps, an organ, and drums are lugged in; the pianist is jamming with the two flutes; the crew checks the stage lighting, fading in and out on the three performers doing their warm-ups. Tom Johnson, the music director, stops by to check details, as do five others in the next fifteen minutes. The room is noisy and alive, but not chaotic. Everything focuses towards the metamorphosis into Brel.

"Excuse me," Guy says, and clapping his hands, calls out, "Okay, places everybody. We're working on Act One, then running straight through... Oh, by the way," he turns back. "I'm doing the part. Yeah, Amsterdam--but not on purpose, I'll explain later." He joins the other singers--Curt, Patty, and Paula--behind the backdrop, and the overture begins for Tuesday's rehearsal.

II

BEFORE HE could do anything, Guy needed funding. Off went 250 letters to House associates, overseers, friends who owed favors--"anyone who I thought had money and might write a check." Figuring that regular mail might be ignored, he sent fifty-odd registered letters, which arrived in New York around 6:30 a.m. Guy's bleary-eyed friends wrote profanities on the receipts; they also sent money. In three weeks he had $2000. Royalties claimed a major chunk, the stage construction another. Even the xerox bill came in at an astronomical $150.

Next Guy scouted about for a music director, ruling out everyone who wasn't reluctant, who didn't see the problems. Someone recommended a "Tom Johnson" at New England Conservatory. They met over drinks, hit it off, and prepared for casting. Later, it no longer mattered when Guy learned that, by chance, he's called the wrong Tom Johnson at the music school.

One thousand casting notices went out, and ads played on the hour at WBCN. Guy and Tom stayed up til 5 a.m. the week of casting. After auditioning 104 people and running call-backs for twenty-four, Guy had his cast. "I looked for emotional involvement, not merely talent or intellectual response, because I loved the show and wanted the cast to also." After collecting a set of musicians from the conservatories and gently coercing friends into his production staff, Guy was ready to put together the show.

The cast rehearsed 12 hours a day throughout spring break, doing acting and singing exercises, working into a unified group of equals with no star and no self-consciousness. Three days in, Len (who played Male One) realized that his Polish-accented English would trip up the show and bowed out. His understudy took over but became embroiled with his other (professional) show and opted out the next week. Guy re-cast the part, but by then the show was one-third blocked, voices were more developed, and more importantly, the cast had become close. The others asked Guy to take over Amsterdam. "I figure I'll get torn apart for being an actor-director. The egocentricity, after hearing 104 other people!" But it was, after all, how fate had manipulated it.

III

GUY fulfills as totally as possible his vision of Brel as a cabaret piece with its type of audience involvement. "I feel I'm inviting the audience to see it. I can't see charging people for anything that's not perfect." This translates into a multitude of minor amenities like vacuuming the floor before the show and ultimately into the overall production.

The stage, an irregular stack of three circular platforms, thrusts into the middle of the room. "I wanted a shape more than a stage, something with plenty of movement yet undefined. I wanted it to be out into the audience; when you have a proscenium at the end of a room, you have people looking at the show; you forget they're there." The platforms rest on steel pipe legs, specially cut and threaded because the usual machinery couldn't handle such short legs. Guy proudly shows off his banged-up finger, still recovering from his carpentry. "And I have a very low tolerance for pain."

Surrounding the stage are different sized tables with red checked tableclothes. Each table has its centerpiece, its basket of fruit, its wine, and its waiter. "I want to make this a festive occasion. I'm hoping people will come early, be served, drink a little, get to know the table next to them. That's the reason for starting at nine. It's more, uh, celebratory to drink at night as opposed to evening."