Daily News from New York, New York • 145

Sunday, October 12, 1986 CITY LIGHTS PERFORMING ARTS rod a Little Do MI ELssid) "DThioDtro How 'Raggedy Ann' melted hearts in Moscow and wowed 'em in D.C, ONCE UPON A TIME: Ivy Austin in the title role (above) and (far with Scott Schaefer as Raggedy Andy. Left, Joe Raposo fell in love with it 'It must come to she said. 'I promise you theater in "From there, it went all the way to the White House. It took months, but it finally worked out, and we were the first cultural exchange between the two nations. (That agreement brought the Moiseyev Ballet here last month).

By PATRICIA O'HAIRE Daily News Staff Writer THERE'S A VERY UN-usual musical set to open Thursday night at the Neder-lander Theater, if called "Raggedy Ann," and it's based on the storybook character of the same name. It has a couple of stuffed dolls in it, a camel with wrinkled knees, a little girl who's dying, some adults and a bunch of animals. It was hatched in an Egg in upstate Albany and incubated in the cold, cold heart of Russia, and it was the first bit of culture to be exchanged between the two nations after the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Geneva a year ago started the thaw. It softened a lot of ice over there, then moved to Washington, D.C, where the meltdown continued at the Kennedy Center. Now, having captured the hearts of two of the world's major capitals, it's ready to see if it can work its magic on the sophisticated audiences of New York.

Will it work? Who knows? Once upon a time there was another "Annie" whose magic worked for years on Broadway, so why not this one? "Raggedy Ann" is a charming story, with a charming history. The book was written by William Gibson, playwright of "The Miracle Worker," "Two for the Seesaw" and others. The music and lyrics were put together by Massachusetts-born, Harvard-educated Joe Raposo, 47, musical director of TVs "Sesame Street," and author of songs sung by such diverse people as Kermit the Frog Not Easy Being and Frank Sinatra (same number). And dancer Patricia Birch is both choreographer and director. "Raggedy Ann" began life as "Rag Dolly: The Raggedy Ann Musical" back in 1973, as a project for the "Hallmark Hall of Fame" TV series.

It was to star Goldie Hawn and Dick Van Dyke as the two title characters, but "we just couldn't get it to work out," Raposo says. "Then someone suggested maybe it should be done with animated figures instead. Hallmark said no, they were only interested in live theater, not cartoons. So Hallmark dropped out, and it became an animated movie instead. It was pretty good then, but unfortunately, it was released three days before 'Star Trek, and it never had a chance.

That year, everyone wanted to see 'Star lUT IT FINALLY FOUND a place on cable TV, and that's where Pat Snyder (di rector of the Empire State Institute for the Performing Arts in Albany) saw it and loved it She thought it would be a good project for her I IWiiiiaiiH Moscow Musical Theater for Children. Sats is 95 and a hero of the Soviet Union, so she's a person of some influence. Her father had been in Stanislavski's acting company, and when she was a child, Prokofiev dedicated his "Peter and the Wolf" to her. After the Geneva summit, the Russians had been looking for a cultural exchange that would reflect a more general involvement in life here, something nonpolitical, and she came here to look for something that would fill the bill. "But there was still a ban on Aeroflot flights," says Raposo, "so she flew into Montreal and was taking a train to New York when she decided to get off in Albany and visit Pat Snyder.

She saw the play there, and I 'E TOOK MOSCOW LIKE a storm," Raposo says. "Regular tickets were something like five rubles, but people were scalping them for as much as 50. We played three weeks, but we could have played three months. People came with their kids, they told others, and the others came with or without kids. "Funny thing, too.

We were sort of overly protective about what they'd think about the show, and we thought we'd have to make some minor changes when it got to Moscow, things like changing some of the costumes, some of the very tight-fitting tights on some of the girls, to something more decorous. But they said 'No! Oh, no! Is wond-er-ful! Don't change Turns out we were overly polite, deferring to imaginary sensibilities. "Now there's talk about making a translation of it into Russian, and making it an official part of the Soviet theater repertory. "That would be nice, wouldn't it?" Wouldn't it ever. children's theater, at the building known as the Egg, on the Albany Mall.

"She asked me to develop it as a theatrical piece, and she brought in Bill Gibson to write the book." The 71-year-old Gibson was intrigued. Though he's best known as a playwright and authorfche's no stranger to children's theater, having written a fairly successful Christmas musical for kids, "Butterfingers Angel." "Gibson brought his own sort of dark insight into it," Raposo explains. "He brought in his own ideas about life and redemption, and grounded it for us." Then the coincidences began. While the cultural exchange program was still going on with Russia (President Carter ended it after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan seven years ago), Pat Snyder's ESIPA had been to Moscow with a stage version of "The Wizard of Oz," complete with Harold Arlen music. While there, she became friendly with a woman named Natalia Sats, who is director of the.