They Had No Money In The Budget For A Set

Finian's Rainbow. Liked the show but loathed the set. Looks like they got it at a 99 cent store.

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Updated On: 12/5/09 at 01:21 PM

when i frist read the subject title, i thought it was about spider man

None of the revivals of this season have had a great set yet...

Bye Bye Birdie
Finian's Rainbow
Ragtime
A Little Night Music

La Cage will be another cheap Chocolate Factory set. So it looks like it's up to Promises, Promises.

Yes. So lavish!

It's a minimal set of scaffolding. It works for the production. But it's nothing special. Just like the sets of the other revivals.

>La Cage will be another cheap Chocolate Factory set.<

Although it's an intimate La Cage compared to the two Broadway productions, it does have sets that look like sets. It has the apartment, Chez Jacqueline, that promenade where "Song on the Sand" takes place, set pieces for all of the Zaza and Cagelles numbers and the staircase for the finale. I expected much less set than what that production actually gives you.

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So....we're not talking about the Mendes GYPSY?

I sometimes wonder if any of you have actually seen these shows of just looked at pictures?

I have to admit a bit of bias: Scenery doesn't generally do it for me. Give me a minimalist staging like GRAND HOTEL over needlessly elaborate sets any day.

I may sound like I don't want elaborate scenery, and that isn't really the case. What I resent is producers spending extra $ on scenery and effects to justify jacking up ticket prices, instead of getting the writers to improve the underlying shows.

FINIAN'S RAINBOW - every scene but one in each act take place in "The Meetin' Place in Rainbow Valley." In the original the other scenes would have been played in front of a downstage drop or curtain - a typical conceit of 1940's musicals. The set for the current revival serves the story-telling well and allows the action to move expediently from one scene to the next. It also provides multiple playing levels which are used to great effect in the larger chorus numbers.

RAGTIME - Once again the current set serves the story telling beautifully. It gave the show the epic look it needed, without overpowering us. Again I liked how the different levels were used, and to watch Coalhouse's frantic journey from top to bottom as he rushes to Sarah when she is beaten was a

I should add that I do not feel the original was grossly overstated at all. The sets were very well thought out to communicate information expediently: the series of gates coming down further and further downstage as the immigrants made their way through each level of immigration bureaucracy; The bridge on which Henry Ford appeared slowly lowering and almost crushing his robotic factory workers below. Or Evelyn Nesbit's Vaudeville swing suddenly becoming a regular swing the little boy is on in the backyard of the New Rochelle House. Ok, maybe the fireworks and pinwheels going off in the finale were a bit much, but after all Father owns a fireworks factory.


MEMPHIS - Here's where a designer gets carried away..the radio studio constantly popping up out of the stage becomes a distraction (making a re-design necessary for touring) and it doesn't serve the story at all. (The gimmick of Perry Como popping up out of the stage in the record store was cute, but again needless. There are other ways that bit could be staged for later tours.)

BYE BYE BIRDIE - I keep remembering the 1991 Tommy Tune tour which used variations of the original designs (and re-created Gower Champion's brilliant staging of "The Telephone Hour") and had a look to it that recalled Archie comic books. It served the show the reminding us that this is a comic-book musical. Very little of that comes through in this new staging.

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Finians was a cheapo ugly set

Sorry but they are the facts.

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Mr Roxy, I am surprised that YOU cannot differentiate between a FACT and an OPINION.

Again I ask - Have you even seen this production?

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could Finian's have actually been striving for a harkening back to 'sets of yore', as the piece itself is?

Indeed it could. There are not a lot of pictures of the full stage set of the 1947 production, but one that was used on the original 78-RPM album of FINIAN's shows one massive tree stage left, with limbs climbing towards the proscenium. This probably explains why most of the scenes take place in the one setting.

Even so, why would anyone go to see a show like this for the scenery alone? The score and the story are the core of FINIAN'S RAINBOW.

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To a poster above who asked if I saw it

The answer is Yes & I still do not like the set. If you do, great.

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Not saying that the set for "Finian's Rainbow" overwhelmed me, but I don't go to shows for the set. The PRODUCTION was awesome, and that's all that matters to me. I left the theater humming the songs and would gladly pony up the money to see this great revival of a forgotten gem a second time!

I would love to see FR bad sets or no. It's just such delightful satire. Addam's Family has gorgeous sets, but the thin story is weighed down by them. I would sacrifice those complex set pieces for a more challenging, enriching work of theater.

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