Favourite scene transitions? — Page 3

I love the scene transition in the original set of Miss Saigon where KIm's bedroom (the smaller stage on the actual stage) slides away to make place for the Nightmare scene, a scene which has multiple stunning transitions, but I love the part where that 20 feet fence was dropped in a split second on the instrumental notes right before the "I still believe reprise". And then at the end of the scene the smaller stage is back, which is just brilliant. It makes the show very intimate. Too bad the new version has none of this.

Updated On: 1/4/19 at 07:02 PM

Dave28282 said: "I love the scene transition in the original set of Miss Saigon where KIm's bedroom (the smaller stage on the actual stage) slides away to make place for the Nightmare scene, a scene which has multiple stunning transitions, but I love the part where that20 feet fence was dropped in a split second on the instrumental notes right before the "I still believe reprise". And then at the end of the scene the smaller stage is back, which is just brilliant. It makes the show very intimate. Too bad the new version has none of this."

Pretty much every scene transition in the original "Miss Saigon" is amazing. My favorite is at the end of "The Last Night of the World." Kim and Chris step onto his balcony and start to kiss. As the music crescendos the room set splits in half and barrels off the stage while the balcony slides to the back and grows smaller and smaller until you can't see it anymore. A split second later the percussion intro to "Morning of the Dragon" starts and suddenly the completely bare stage, framed by those massive rice paper blinds, is bathed in blinding white light. Truly stunning.

Set Designer extraordinaire Boris Aronson created moving birches for the original A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC. Birches would move from r to l and the scene and scenery would appear magically in back of them as they moved. And then, in the middle of the "A Weekend In The Country" number, the birches parted and we see the entire Armfeldt mansion facade. It created an enchanted evening that was still one of my favorite.



Mentioning Aronson: PACIFIC OVERTURES - when the warship appears folding out like a Japanese fan - that was pretty amazing!

Updated On: 1/21/19 at 10:11 PM

Not necessarily the most 'creative', but the most powerful to me by far is Something Bad is Happening / More Racquetball into Holding to the Ground from the Falsettos revival. The set going from the abstract with the block pieces, into Whizzer's hospital room with the actual furniture, hit me like a ton of bricks. Wrecked me every single time.