Peter Hall, one of England's more protean directors - comedy, dramas, tragedy, even opera and movies - has accepted the challenge of staging his first musical for Broadway, "Via Galactica," by Galt MacDermot and Christopher Gore.

Hall, who's been here checking up on his most recent venture, Harold Pinter's "Old Times" before it starts a tour tomorrow in Washington, remarked that he'd been offered plenty of musicals before.  But "Via Galactica" attracted him both because of the music by MacDermot, composer of "Hair" and "Two Gentlemen of Verona", and the subject matter.  "Via Galactica" starts on earth, involves a skyjacking of a spaceship (word unreadable) a point when our solar system has been entirely colonized.  Seems that all is calm and peaceful and there is no longer a need for heroes.  But, says the musicals thesis, not so.  There's always a need for heroes to push to new frontiers, a point demonstrated by a group of inhabitants of a comparatively unimportant planet who grow tired of it all and need to push outward.

The project, requiring a company of about 30 performers, six of these being main parts, is not going to be a pushover to cast.  Hall, recalling the agility of Peter Brooks's actors in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" - they could roll, tumble, climb and fly a trapeze with ease - is looking for more of the same.  Shirley Rich, one of the theater's leading casting directors, is already on the trail.  Bodily agility is essential because, after all, there is that matter of weightlessness in space.

Hall, committed to stage Monteverdi's opera "The Return of Ulysses" at Glyndebourne this coming season, expects to start putting "Via Galactica" into the works in mid-July for an opening in early fall. John Bury is just about set to do the costumes and set designs and George W. George and Barnard S. Straus, in association with Nat Shapiro, will be the sponsors.

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