They gave “The Longest Night” to Corinne Adler. Let me say that again so it lands the way it landed for me: they handed a big, sweeping, unapologetically sentimental musical to a director famous for cold, stripped-bare productions of difficult plays. Mija, I have not been this curious about a revival in a year.

Here’s the collision. “The Longest Night” is a warhorse — a 1980s musical about a family across three generations, built for a full orchestra, a rain effect, and at least one staircase somebody descends slowly while the audience reaches for tissues. It works on scale and swell. Adler, meanwhile, made her name stripping plays down to a bare stage and two chairs, finding the ice at the center of the material. She does not do staircases. She does not do rain. She finds the thing the sentiment is protecting you from and she makes you look at it.

So which one wins? That’s the whole question, and it’s why I’m buying a ticket the day they go on sale.

Because here’s what a director like Adler can do to a show like this. The danger of “The Longest Night” has always been that the sweep does the work the writing should — that you cry at the orchestration, not the story. Every lazy production leans on the swell and lets the actual family underneath go generic. If Adler strips the machinery away and forces the material to earn its emotion honestly — no rain, no slow staircase, just people in a room telling each other the truth — this could be the production that finally proves the show is better than its reputation. That would be a genuine event.

And here’s the way it goes wrong, because I always have notes. Some shows are sentimental machines, and when you pull the machine apart, you don’t find hidden depth — you find the reason the machine was there. If “The Longest Night” is one of those, a stripped production won’t reveal the show’s soul. It’ll reveal that the soul was the string section all along, and you’ll spend three hours watching a great director prove a musical didn’t need her. Ay, I’ve seen that experiment fail. It’s a long night when it fails.

The casting isn’t announced yet, and it matters more than usual here. In a stripped production, there’s nowhere to hide — no spectacle to cover a thin performance. Adler is going to need actors who can hold the bare stage she’s famous for. If she gets them, the gamble has a real chance.

The venue tells you she’s serious about the concept: the Orpheum Room, an intimate house, not a barn. You don’t put “The Longest Night” in a small room unless you mean to change what it is.

I don’t know if this works. That’s exactly why it’s the fall revival I’m most desperate to see. A careful, competent remount I can skip. A brilliant director wrestling a warhorse to the ground? Get me a seat. Estamos aquí.

“The Longest Night” begins previews October 20 at the Orpheum Room.