Drastic Setting Changes in a Revival

The current production of The Cherry Orchard takes place in Hell.

The famous Sam Mendes CABARET revival remianed a fairly faithful nod to the original design, until the coup de theatre finale that put the cast in a concentration camp.

icecreambenjamin said: "John Doyle's production of Company was set in a funeral home..."

What evidence of this is there? I saw that production a few times and have read/listened to many interviews with Doyle and the cast of none of them ever mentioned that. Doyle has mentioned the Sweeney assylum so he's not vague about his ideas.

The 1999 Broadway Revival of Annie Get Your Gun re-imagined the story as a "show-within-a-show" set as a Big Top traveling circus.

The first minute or so of Bartlett Sher's production of Fiddler on the Roof is set in modern day Anatevka. Diane Paulus' production of Pippin was set in a circus.

John Doyle's The Color Purple is set in Woody McSitz's Discount Chair Warehouse.

Updated On: 12/14/16 at 08:14 AM

"The current production of The Cherry Orchard takes place in Hell."

I think that's only the audience section.

There's Anne Bogart's famous On The Town set on board a battleship; it almost put Trinity Rep out of business. And Crazy Anne did South Pacific at NYU and set it in a veteran's hospital.

I enjoyed A.J. Antoon's Taming of the Shrew in the Park back in 1990; it was set in the Wild West and starred Morgan Freeman (who muffed many of his famous lines) and Tracey Ullman.

I saw an amateur production of Into the Woods which was set in a young boy's bedroom, very similar to the way The Drowsy Chaperone plays - his father or grandfather was reading him the story, which would come to life around him. Not the worst, but it seemed rather obvious and heavy handed to me.

That last Promises, Promises revival moved the action backwards only about 8 years, but I thought it changed the tone enormously, as Fran is written to be a "free spirit" quasi-hippie; Chenoweth played her more like a Donna Reed impersonator.

Virtually every production Ivo van Hove has ever done. I personally enjoyed his production of The Misanthrope, which was set in a modern corporate workplace.

It's far more common in new productions of classical plays, which allow for more malleable settings. For example, the current Othello is set in a contemporary military barracks, and it's hardly the first production to take that approach. Several productions of Macbeth (the 2006 park production with Schreiber, the 2008 Broadway production with Stewart) set the action in totalitarian regimes. There are plenty of other examples of this.

And of course, it happens commonly in the opera world, particularly in Europe.

There was the production of MACBETH that had Alan Cumming playing every character and was set in an asylum.

Who recalls the famous cancelled "South Pacific" set in a psychiatric hospital? Has to be some kind of ultimate. But in general, moving any story to a hospital - particularly one for the mentally ill -- has become its own hoary cliche. If that's any director's fresh idea, he or she might reconsider. "Sweeney" fit, but most others strain.

On A Clear Day You Can See Forever (the forestory updated, the backstory changed from 19th Century England to 1940s U.S.)

Was it a military psychiatric hospital?