Favorite Set Designs- Page 18

[maila]

Posted: 5/31/11 at 2:39pm

TURANDOT set design by david hockney

Posted: 5/31/11 at 6:03pm

Curtain Call, I think I know what you mean, but could you explain why you find Sweeney's design "unecesary"? Just how big and how many elements there were? or?

I wish there were better photos of Bjornson's designs for Follies--I have a copy of the souvenir program, but there's not much that really shows the overall design.

[charlesjguiteau]

Posted: 5/31/11 at 7:42pm

Contrary to Curtaincall's take, I too saw Eugene Lee's OBC design of Sweeney Todd, and I'm one of those who thought the scale of the set worked beautifully for the larger-than-life scale of the show. Hal Prince meant us to see the story as an indictment of the class system in Victorian Society, and the set brought that vividly to life.

Stage Left and Right of the huge Uris stage were occupied with metal stairs to galleries that held turbines and operating machinery-- stuff Lee reassembled from a defunct foundry. Overhead was an enormous shed roof of dirty glass panes. Two bridges flew in to span across the galleries at times. Rolling metal stairs allowed characters to step off one gallery and be wheeled around the stage till they arrived at the other gallery. Upstage was a corrugated tin wall that could fly out to reveal a backdrop of factories along the Thames, rendered in the style of a 19th century engraving. The key element was the famous cube unit on casters: downstairs front was Lovett's pie shop, a doorway led to her parlour in the rear, and stairs led up to Todd's room above. A few other units were rolled onstage to augment the basics (Pirelli's gypsy cart, or the Furnace door for the final scene), but essentially the production used a minimum of set pieces to serve the story. Vastly evocative and very basic at the same time-- a great design.
Updated On: 5/31/11 at 07:42 PM

Posted: 5/31/11 at 8:58pm

Gre description! I've seen the DVD of the tour shot in LA so much but always forget the set was even more complete in Broadway.

[morosco]

Posted: 5/31/11 at 10:00pm

The original cast of Sweeney Todd dwarfed by Eugene Lee's set at the Uris (now Gershwin) Theatre.




Updated On: 5/31/11 at 10:00 PM

[morosco]

Posted: 5/31/11 at 10:08pm

Eugene Lee's design for Sweeney Todd.

[chewy5000]

Posted: 5/31/11 at 10:19pm

Why on earth did they make that stage so damn big?

[charlesjguiteau]

Posted: 5/31/11 at 10:24pm

oops, my bad re Sweeney-- looks like there was only one bridge running on the gantry between the galleries, not two.

Ericmontreal, I was so sad to discover that the preserved video was of the touring set instead of the full Broadway set.

Chewy, the stage of the Uris (now the Gershwin) already WAS vast. It was Lee's great choice (I believe) to FILL that vast space with something shivery and meaningful rather than portal down to a standard Broadway frame.

[chewy5000]

Posted: 5/31/11 at 10:33pm

I know, I was wondering why they built it like that in the first place.

[CurtainCall]

Posted: 6/1/11 at 12:15pm

I absolutely agree it's an amazing set, for something, but not Sweeney Todd. Leaving aside the stunning vista of the Manchester Ship Canal that was the backdrop, which obviously places it in some place other than London - it's an interesting industrial set. Denis Quilley, who played Sweeney in London, described it as "wonderfully evocative and impressive....and unnecessary", a close family friend who also had a major part in it, used to say she was off to the building site to work - she loved the show but didn't like the production.

I was impressed with the set when I saw it at the Uris - I saw it three times over a six month period -but I was rather bemused as to what it had to do with the story of Sweeney Todd - or at least the one I'd been brought up on and knew from Bond's version. It was a tad overdone, shall we say, especially as one quickly realized that the central box, was where all the action was and that this huge stage and the set around it were of no account, except to add a very, portentous note, which the story of Sweeney Todd, really doesn't need.

I'm not saying that the set killed Sweeney when it moved to London, but it was symptomatic of the production.
Updated On: 6/1/11 at 12:15 PM

[charlesjguiteau]

Posted: 6/1/11 at 12:56pm

Curtain Call, really interesting discussion here. Love that you saw the OBC Sweeney more times than me :)
"I was rather bemused as to what it had to do with the story of Sweeney Todd - or at least the one I'd been brought up on and knew from Bond's version."

Not having seen the Bond play, I can only humbly suggest that the Sondheim/Prince contribution turns the play into a very different animal. To me the foundry stands in metaphorically for the horrors of the larger London society, without which Todd's motivation to murder ceases to make sense. I know John Doyle's very successful revival has proved to many that Sweeney Todd can simply be a chamber story about seven or eight messed up individuals, but I remain convinced that a big canvas keeps the scale of the show as Sondheim intended.

By saying all the action happens on the cube, you're forgetting some stunning staging coups, particularly the "Kiss Me" sequence where the Judge and Beadle were led up and down throughout the "city" via staircase and bridge, always about to arrive at Anthony and Johanna's divan center stage, and always spun away from barging in at the last second. Yummy sequence that was completely sacrificed in later daintier productions.

[Jake01]

Posted: 6/1/11 at 1:45pm

"a big canvas keeps the scale of the show as Sondheim intended"

I've always understood that what Sondheim originally intended was actually closer to what John Doyle did: small-scale, bare-bones, scary rather than epic, etc. I read a quote of Sondheim's about that somewhere.

[bwayphreak234]

Posted: 6/1/11 at 1:48pm

Speaking of sets we think don't go with the show, I will NEVER understand that god awful Clock of the Time Dragon set Wicked has. The click was an important part in the novel, but in the musical it is referenced maybe twice, yet it serves as the central design element. Not to mention the fact I think it's just flat out ugly. Funny that Wicked's set was designed by Eugene Lee too. AND it's in the same theatre.

[RippedMan]

Posted: 6/1/11 at 2:22pm

It's funny to me to think of Sweeney playing that huge theater. If they ever announced Sweeney Todd even playing the St. James, I think people would be baffled.

[charlesjguiteau]

Posted: 6/1/11 at 2:50pm

bwayphreak, I half agree with you and half disagree. Hated the dragon aspect but loved the clockworks as a theme for the whole set. There's a strange episode described in the book "Defying Gravity" where a series of designers were auditioned for Joe Mantello in 2002, and Stephen Schwartz remembers Eugene Lee brought in this white model full of low-tech "Victorianesque kinds of gadgety things with some wheel that turns..." It seems it was AFTER he passed the audition that Eugene Lee read the Maguire book, got inspired with the Clock of the Time Dragon, and foisted that visual onto the writers to try to mesh together. Very odd ass-backwards way to end up with the visuals onstage.

For me, putting the nonsensical dragon aside, I thought the rest of the design was charming and fun in a decorative sort of way, but ultimately very traditional-- portals and sliding panels that have been standard design toys in musicals for a hundred years. Pretty but no breaking new ground here.

[CurtainCall]

Posted: 6/1/11 at 2:51pm

In the case of Sweeney, Stephen Sondheim certainly anticipated that he was writing a small-scale show, Harold Prince backed into doing the show because he's not a great fan of melodrama and so gave it a socio-political twist. I think Sondheim and Bond give a good account of Todd's homicidal motivation, within the traditions of the revenge tragedy without needing to suggest that the Industrial Revolution lay at the heart of it all It is, however, an elucidation or interpretation that helped New York audiences meet Sweeney Todd, so I try not to knock it too often.

After, Sweeney opened to bad reviews in London, Stephen Sondheim shared his bemusement as to why it had been rejected and John Guare asked him to imagine someone coming to America with a serious musical based on 'I Love Lucy' and what the American reaction would be. I think the original production took itself too seriously (which is not to say, that I didn't enjoy the performances, I did go back twice).

I can only speak for myself, of course, when I say the productions I've enjoyed - the National production, Chris Bond's own versions and various Fringe productions, as well as the John Doyle version - have allowed me to enjoy the humanity of the story, without it getting swamped by a set.

Updated On: 6/1/11 at 02:51 PM

[beautywickedlover]

Posted: 6/1/11 at 3:13pm

"Beauty and the Beast" and "Shrek" have some of my favorite set designs.

[bwayphreak234]

Posted: 6/1/11 at 3:18pm

The problem with the clock theme is that it has nothing to do with the show. If it played a central aspect in the story like it did on the novel, it would be fine, but the theme for the set does not go with the story. There are some beautiful moments (I love the train station and the forest), but the whole clock thing just doesn't cut it for me

[RippedMan]

Posted: 6/1/11 at 3:46pm

The Wicked set design has been discussed to DEATH on this board.

I loved and hated the set design for the blue "House of Blue Leaves" revival. It wanted to be different, but was somehow very restrained at the same time.

[bwayphreak234]

Posted: 6/1/11 at 5:30pm

Does the Women on the Verge set have portals/ paneled wings for the side of the stage? I know they have those treadmills, but how are the wings designed? Is it just traditional fabric panels?

Posted: 6/1/11 at 5:33pm

"I've always understood that what Sondheim originally intended was actually closer to what John Doyle did: small-scale, bare-bones, scary rather than epic, etc. I read a quote of Sondheim's about that somewhere."

It's true that Sweeney was one of the very few musicals Sondheim came up with the idea of doing before he found his collaborators (Passion, and I think Bounce/Road Show being the others), and he did see it as an intimate production with the main goal to scare audiences, at least from what he's written. It wasn't until they found the political framework that Prince really got on board. Sondheim has also said many times that he figured this would be one of the rare opportunities to do a BIG production, so to go with it, as they could always do smaller productions later.

I know when RNT did their famed production in the early 90s in London (which is *amazing*), they did do it intimately,a nd Sondheim was quoted as saying it was his fave production, although he's been quoted as saying that several times about productions in the past so it never seems to be the final thought on something. The Doyle production was prob much more bare bones than even Sondheim considered, though :P (and did add its own metaphors to the piece, ones I'm not completely sold on, personally).

It's interesting that the recent Paris production in many ways seemed to go back to the Prince production (the set even looks like a simplified take, in some ways, of the Lee set)--the first really major revival of the piece to go back to the original Broadway scale that I can think of, outside of NYCO's version of the Prince/Lee staging they used to do every few years.

[CurtainCall]

Posted: 6/1/11 at 6:15pm

I think if you go to the opera, you'll expect a fairly big version of the show - rather than a bare bones version of Sweeney and that's certainly, what you got at Chatelet. That's the theatrical language that's used. But in terms of elucidation, it was a pretty, straight-down-the-middle take on the show. Compared to their Sound of Music, in terms of staging, it was quite conservative, in some ways it owed a bit to the film, rather than Prince..

Posted: 6/1/11 at 7:21pm

Interesting, now I'm curious what their Sound of Music was like. Certainly it was a fairly traditional Sweeney--compared to their Night Music (which seemed to get a much more mixed reaction) at any rate.

Eugene Lee seems to divide people as a designer. As I said, I'm not entirely sold on his Sweeney (though the Kiss Me moment that was mentioned is a fave of mine, even on the so/so DVD shot in LA), and still think even with Prince's concept there that I'd be curious to see what Aronson would have done. One thing is Lee's set seems very "open" to me--even with all the elements moved around by actors/stagehands, etc--there's a lot of empty space there. I don't think that would be true of Aronson--even if you look at a fairly empty stage like his Follies (pre Loveland)--and I do feel even a big version of Sweeney could do with a few more shadows... (Let's not even mention Lee's work on Merrily, not that he can really be blamed for that)

That said, there is menace there, and I could see how the full Broadway set "live" could really give that feeling of opression that Prince wanted. While that's not the kinda scares Sondheim seemed to intend with Sweeney, it does still make me shiver a little--the cold, harsh brutalness of it. I do always find it amusing that Prince claimed to not like or get melodrama but then threw himself so deeply into Phantom--without really even finding the metaphors he so often needed to stage anything, but just saying he saw it as an out and out romantic musical that flows over the audience like seductive perfume (I think that's a close quote...). Maybe he just reaqlized he needed a hit at that time

That said the only Lee designs I've seen live myself, and not just on video or in pictures, aside from Wicked which has been discussed to death (I do wonder if Lee's design was for a version of the musical that at least mentioned the Dragon more and they didn't wanna get rid of it while cutting...), were for Show Boat and Ragtime. And I loved both sets (I know many in this thread have picked the much more basic Ragtim revival set as a fave, but as overly elaborate as some of the original was, it worked amazingly on stage).

Updated On: 6/1/11 at 07:21 PM

[bwayphreak234]

Posted: 6/1/11 at 8:53pm

I think Scott Pask and Derek McLane(with the exception of the grease revival) are both incredible designers. I love looking at the pictures of their work on their websites.

[charlesjguiteau]

Posted: 6/1/11 at 9:17pm

bwayphreak, Totally agree Scott and Derek are among the very best designers working on Broadway today. That's why a mediocre set Scott may do for BoM (my view only, guys), or Derek may do for the Kennedy Center Follies (based on photos so far-- we finally see it next Thursday) leaves us all the more disappointed.

ericmontreal, I agree that Eugene Lee's "Showboat" had spectacular design ideas at work (the radically ungingerbreaded showboat units were so superb) but also clunky ones too-- remember the heavy lumpen Palmer House Hotel set in Act II?