Yeah going thru the pics and posting them all I have to say I am much more excited by the design than I expected. The homage to the styles of the original is especially great. They're still pretty basic (a drop and a set piece mostly it looks like,) but effective.
And to give credit, Beowulf Borritt of course won the Tony last year for his designs for Act I. He worked with Stro on Scotsboro Boys, Prince on LoveMusik and Prince and Stro on their London Menier Chocolate Factory failure Paradise Found as well as of course dozens of other shows like On the Town and Sondheim on Sondheim (which thankfully this doesn't look like--I was worried they would go for a similar style...) and here's his website with lots of great pics (none of Prince of Broadway yet though--these are all I've found so far.) http://www.beowulfborittdesign.com/
He does great work, but this seems pretty basic to me. There's no over all theme to the design. It's basically just like Hal Prince: The Hits. Which, I can see the appeal of somewhat, but I like a show with a narrative, and this seems rather bland to me.
There is a bit of a narrative with narration following his life. But this approach admittedly does seem like a budget version of the very expensive full (mostly) original sets used for Jerome Robbins' Broadway which of course was a success but couldn't make back its money. This seems like that mixed with Sondheim on Sondheim's format. I am kinda glad though that they went for homage designs instead of an overall design myself especially given how diverse the shows are.
Well I didn't want to get into it, but he's a Satanist.
Every full moon he sacrifices 4 puppies to the Dark Lord and smears their blood on his paino.
This should help you understand the score for Wicked a little bit more.
Tazber's: Reply to
Is Stephen Schwartz a Practicing Christian
The sets strike me as a bit similar in style to how some numbers in the Kennedy Center Honors get staged, but with a bit more budget/style behind them. Some of the stage pictures are pretty powerful.
This is an incredible piece of history. Thank you for posting those pics, Eric. This is a must-see.
"Some people can thrive and bloom living life in a living room, that's perfect for some people of one hundred and five. But I at least gotta try, when I think of all the sights that I gotta see, all the places I gotta play, all the things that I gotta be at"
You're welcome - it oddly took me a while to post them so glad they are appreciated lol Apparently they were from a run through of act I and just some of II so we may get more.
I will say from Hal Prince saying he didn't remember his original staging, etc, I was worried they would have little connection to the original productions but this suggests ther definitely is an effort to pay tribute to many of those iconic stage pictures many of us know well if sometimes only from past photos.