No lounging around

Just eight days before the first preview of Bailiwick Chicago’s Departure Lounge, the production team is happily adding a new song. “Dougal [Irvine] wrote it just for our production,” enthuses Kevin Mayes, the show’s music director. The debut musical by up-and-coming U.K. composer Irvine just completed its first commercial run overseas; last year, it played New York’s Summer Play Festival as a work in progress. As he worked on the London production, Irvine kept in touch with Bailiwick, modifying the show for its U.S. premiere Friday 5. “We use Skype almost daily,” Mayes says with a chuckle. “Poor Dougal!”

The show’s premise is simple: Four English lads are stuck in the airport of a Spanish resort town after a week of sun-drenched debauchery. The mostly male cast includes one woman, the object of their amorous teenage attention. Though the book sounds somewhat thin, Irvine’s pop score has drawn plenty of praise; Time Out London called the music “simply stupendous.”

“It’s sort of like Spring Awakening meets Forever Plaid,” Mayes jokes. With its small ensemble and simple set, the musical comedy is ideal for the cabaret space at the Royal George—and for a new company like Bailiwick Chicago, which lacks significant capital.

If the moniker sounds familiar, that’s because it rose from the ashes of the old Bailwick Repertory Theatre. Under artistic director David Zak, the company’s works ranged from well-received revivals of musicals, such as Gypsy and Parade, to the long-running gimmick revue Naked Boys Singing! It also developed an annual Pride series devoted to LGBT plays, many of them new works whose intentions outshone their talent. Facing financial woes (and allegations of failing to pay its artists and employees), the company folded in 2009 after nearly three decades. Mayes and friends swooped in to create a phoenix.

Bailiwick Chicago’s first two full productions, Aida and Fucking Men, ran simultaneously this summer, enjoying positive reviews and even finishing their runs in the black. “We are really trying to bring a sustainable business discipline to our company,” says Mayes, 42, who’s also the company’s executive director.

A Springfield native and Yale graduate who studied music and theater, Mayes works by day as VP of product development for a healthcare-software company. When forming Bailiwick Chicago’s board, instead of seeking professional funders, Mayes recruited a lawyer and an accountant who would donate their services. Although the old company’s name was legally up for grabs, Mayes says Zak (who has no association with Bailiwick 2.0) gave the group his blessing.

The new collective’s 15 members all worked with Zak. “That’s one of the things that brought us together: David gave a lot of us our first opportunities,” Mayes says. That legacy was one reason for keeping the name; the other was practical: “It’s a lot easier to capitalize off of an existing brand, even if that’s a damaged brand, than it is to build from the ground up,” he says.

“Without Bailiwick [Repertory], this company would not exist,” company member Lili-Anne Brown says. “A lot of people thought, ‘Why would you call it that? We had bad experiences there!’ But none of us did. We had good experiences.”

Following Departure Lounge, the ensemble’s ambitious season includes Violet, an early Jeanine Tesori tuner, followed by the Chicago premiere of Passing Strange, the Tony-winning rock musical closely associated with its creator, musician-playwright Stew (who performs at the MCA November 12 and 13). That casting challenge didn’t faze Brown, who’ll direct the show. “People were saying, ‘You can’t do this show without Stew!’ But I didn’t even see Stew,” Brown says. “I saw Jayson Brooks. He’s a great actor and he’s got a dope band, JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound.

“It’s crazy-crazy busy,” Brown adds, reflecting on Bailiwick’s packed schedule, “but it’s really nice to make theater with people you respect.”

Departure Lounge is now in previews.

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