Favorite Set Designs- Page 10

[morosco]

Posted: 12/30/08 at 5:12pm

Richard Finkelstein's set for The Desperate Hours
Richard Finkelstein's massive portfolio

[henrybutler]

Posted: 12/30/08 at 6:09pm

is another photo of west side story from the bregenz festiva, i think this one is a cooler full-picture, you can see how the dress-shop set rolls in on the track from (stage) left.

Updated On: 12/30/08 at 06:09 PM

[henrybutler]

Posted: 12/30/08 at 6:21pm

Little Women on broadway, Derek McLane.

[EvanK]

Posted: 12/30/08 at 6:32pm

that is insane!!

[Elke]

Posted: 12/30/08 at 6:51pm

Aida


And I always loved the design of Elisabeth (these are from the German production in Essen)...

[Scott Briefer]

Posted: 1/3/09 at 8:49pm

I have been doing extensive Internet searches for some of my favorite older sets to post here. I am surprised to find that as amazing as the Internet is as a resource, most of Broadway's stage designs are not included. In addition, I was surprised to find many of Broadway's most successful designers do not have web sites!

[chrysler99]

Posted: 1/4/09 at 2:19am

this is not a great picture, but it gives you some idea of the 1973 environmental staging of Candide. I found the photo in an eBay listing of the program. Somewhere in my Dad's basement I probably have the original cast album from that production. I think there were a number of photos from the show within the fold.

[allofmylife]

Posted: 1/4/09 at 7:38pm

I saw this. As you walked in, you filled a container full of peanuts from massive bags in the lobby. The crunching was a problem...

[Scott Briefer]

Posted: 1/4/09 at 10:09pm

Chrysler99,

Thanks so much for the photo. I too saw Candide and I remember the peanuts, although I don't remember the crunching being a problem.

[chrysler99]

Posted: 1/4/09 at 11:22pm

I was barely of theater-going age in 1973, but I do recall my grandparents attending and leaving once they saw that the traditional seats were replaced by backless benches.

meanwhile, I was shocked how difficult it was to find any pictures from this production on the web.

[jazzicat]

Posted: 1/4/09 at 11:30pm

Hey can someone bump the costume design thread that was mentioned?
TIA

[RentBoy86]

Posted: 1/5/09 at 1:00am

Was the mezz/balcony just left normal for Candide?

And looking on Mr. Mclane's website, I wonder if "33 Variations" will have the same set design?

[Scott Briefer]

Posted: 1/5/09 at 7:27pm

No. The mezzanine and balcony were mostly covered over. Basically, as I remembered it, the "environment" was built from where the mezzanine overhangs the orchestra, all the way back to the back wall of the stage area. The best seats were stools in the center with no backs and you had to swivel around to see the action as it traveled around you. the sides were like bleachers and did have backs, but the seating wasn't traditional. It was benches covered in canvas with the numbers pained on the canvas to distinguish the different seating locations. There were many stages (the number 10 comes to mind) that were scattered around the room with ramps connecting these playing areas. It was very clever and a lot of fun.

[allofmylife]

Posted: 1/5/09 at 9:25pm

And the overture was kickass.

[Scott Briefer]

Posted: 1/7/09 at 11:04am

Yes the revised score was amazing.

[Mealz1042]

Posted: 1/7/09 at 11:44am

in the heights on AND off broadway, which is similar but both amazing. I may be alone on this but i thought that the set for Young Frankenstein was great. And rent because it was innovative at the time, it serves its purpose of creating feeling and emotion and giving off the edgy/grungy feeling that the show is going for but mostly for sentimental reasons.

[PiraguaGuy2]

Posted: 1/7/09 at 11:50am

The Young Frankenstein set was the best part of the whole production, and was the one thing that really seemed authentic and faithful to the style of the movie.

[morosco]

Posted: 1/7/09 at 11:51am

In The Heights

[RentBoy86]

Posted: 1/7/09 at 5:53pm

Yeah, "In The Heights" is pretty...but there's not that much to it.

And "Candide" does sound amazing. So, how many seats were there in the audience? I mean the Broadway is a big house.

[heo1128]

Posted: 1/7/09 at 6:03pm

Don't know if it's already been said, but I love Next to Normal's set.


Updated On: 1/7/09 at 06:03 PM

[PiraguaGuy2]

Posted: 1/7/09 at 6:03pm

I don't have any pictures, but the set for the upcoming 9 to 5 is simply the most stunning set I've ever seen on Broadway, especially how quickly they can change it.

[CSonBroadway]

Posted: 1/7/09 at 6:11pm

i love hairsprays set. I love the lights in the back

[nobodyhome]

Posted: 1/7/09 at 7:37pm

The Broadway had 900 seats for 1974 Candide.

Many great designs have been mentioned but two that haven't been are Adrienne Lobel's designs for the original Broadway production of Passion and Marina Draghici's designs for the NYSF production of The Skriker.

Even though the former was filmed, the film gives you very little sense of how stunning a few of the drops were. And the scene on the mountain was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. It was a mix of the drop, Fosca's costume and the lighting, all these shades of green that produced an extraordinary, hallucinatory quality. Watching the film, you don't get what was so amazing live.

Photos of The Skriker are online at

http://www.proofsheet.com/public_theater/skriker/source/076.htm

Unfortunately, even though there's a bunch of photos of the scene that was especially extraordinary (again, one that created a kind of hallucinatory effect), what was special about the set doesn't come across (though the wonderful costumes can be seen).

[morosco]

Posted: 1/7/09 at 10:40pm

In Foster Hirsch's fascinating book "Harold Prince and the American Musical Theatre", Prince, Eugene Lee, and Franne Lee comment on their 1974 Broadway production of CANDIDE.

"I couldn't envision how the show could work in a conventional proscenium staging," Prince says. "The play was about a journey and I felt we needed a physical metaphor through which to define Candide's adventures. I remembered a production I had seen in 1970 in Bryant Park of ORLANDO FURIOSO in which the audience followed the action as it moved from one place to another, and I realized I wanted our production in some way to involve the audience physically in the staging." Prince instructed his designers, the Lees, to think of the show as a "carnival": "Hal told us he wanted to be able to stages scenes 'here and there,' and taking off from his suggestions we worked out a traveling concept, with the action played out on ramps and booths and a runway - it was a trick presentation, like a big outdoor fair", Franne Lee recalls.

When the show moved to Broadway after its limited run at the 180-seat Chelsea Theatre in the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the design had to be scaled up in such a way that the audience could still feel involved by being in the middle of the action as they had in Brooklyn. The sedate Broadway Theatre was transformed into a stadium with bleacher seating for 800 fans. Planted amid the seats were ten separate stages connected by ramps and one larger playing area patterned after the Elizabethan inner stage. The thirteen-piece orchestra was placed on four separate stages to provide quadraphonic sound. Making their way through the audience from one "station" to another in a modern version of medieval street-theatre, the actors were in continual movement. The kind of fun the show promised was announced when the audience first entered the theatre to find the ornate lobby made over into a circus arena filled with balloons and streamers, with peanuts sold at the refreshment stand.

Harold Prince and the American Musical Theatre: Expanded Edition (Paperback)

[nobodyhome]

Posted: 1/7/09 at 11:39pm

I should mention that I got my 900 number from Prince's book, Contradictions: Notes on Twenty-Six Years in the Theatre.