Category — Design

On Broadway, designer Tobin Ost isn’t a perfect Victorian

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Tobin Ost is not interested in being Victorian. Or at least not slavishly so. He might be designing sets and costumes for the Broadway revival of Jekyll & Hyde, now at the Marriott Marquis, but if it helps him tell a story, he’s happy to manipulate the style of 19th century England.

That might surprise audiences expecting a period version of the musical, which has a score by Frank Wildhorn and book and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse. Based on the 1886 novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, it follows a scientist who tries to separate good from evil and ends up turning himself into the evil Mr. Hyde. For Ost, the implications of that transformation are more significant than a particular historical era. “The story is hard-edged and aggressive, and we needed to find ways to make it sinister and dangerous onstage as well,” he says.

To that end, Ost looked at materials that could exist in Victorian England but also feel contemporary. For example, when Dr. Jekyll, played by Constantine Maroulis, transforms into Mr. Hyde, he doesn’t drink a potion. He uses a large contraption with colored liquids and wires to inject himself with a drug, which Ost felt would have more contemporary resonance and be more stage worthy and frightening.

However, Ost and director Jeff Calhoun—who have collaborated for a decade on musicals like Newsies and Bonnie and Clyde—misfired at least 4 times before landing on a design idea that could support the entire production.
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Then She Fell immerses you in Carroll’s life and work

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Welcome to Borough Play, our exclusive series on theatre in Brooklyn, Queens, and beyond

Lots of shows promise a one-of-a-kind evening. But that description is literally true when applied to Then She Fell, Third Rail Projects’ immersive dance/theatre piece inspired by the life and works of Lewis Carroll. Performed in the former St. John parochial school in Williamsburg, which has been re-imagined as a Victorian-era psychiatric facility called Kingsland Ward, Then She Fell only accommodates 15 audience members per show, and every viewer’s experience is unique. A variety of characters—including major players from Carroll’s Alice books and the 19th-century author himself—lead you on a journey through the labyrinthine building, which dates from 1909 and feels decidedly like a wonderland, albeit a dark one.

There’s no plot per se, but there are plenty of unforgettable interactions. You may end up taking dictation from the Mad Hatter or painting roses with the White Rabbit or brushing Alice’s hair or watching the Red Queen freak out in her cell or downing unidentified contents of various vials. When you set off on your adventure, much of what happens isn’t set in stone. Even the creators and cast don’t know exactly how everything will play out.

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The director of “Ann” reveals his staging secrets

Phone calls are not inherently interesting on stage, especially when we only see one person talking. If the writing and acting aren’t sharp, then we’re left staring at someone who’s just standing there, shutting us out of a conversation. All we can do wait for the character to hang up.

But when they work, onstage phone calls are tantalizing drama. Take the middle section of Ann, a solo show, written and performed by Holland Taylor, about former Texas governor Ann Richards.

Now on Broadway at the Vivian Beaumont, the show begins with Richards delivering a commencement address to a group of students. She speaks to us directly, as though we were the ones in caps and gowns, and it’s like having a private chat with a fiery, funny woman. Ann talks about her wild family, her growing love of politics, and even her drinking problem with a confidant’s wink.

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Inside the horror musical “The House of Von Macramé”

Welcome to Borough Play, our exclusive series on theatre in Brooklyn, Queens, and beyond

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You might think that a musical billed as a “pop horror fashion show” would require a fair amount of research. But for playwright Joshua Conkel, whose The House of Von Macramé runs at the Bushwick Starr through Feb. 9, writing came fairly instinctually.

“I was a latchkey kid,” he explains. “Every day after school I’d go to the video store and rent a different movie.” When Conkel ran out of typical fair like Friday the 13th he turned to European horror movies. In particular, Suspiria and other Italian giallos, or hrillers. “There’s always a black-gloved killer and maybe a supernatural element. These movies are always super stylish and glamorous.”

In Conkel’s The House of Von Macramé, which features spooky synth music by Matt Marks, we meet Britt, a young aspiring model who comes to New York City and gets swept under the wing of Edsel Von Macramé, an eccentric fashion designer. “She begins to have psychic visions of other models being murdered,” says Conkel, “and she begins to suspect that Edsel may be a part of this.”

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The secrets of “Picnic’s” set design

Madge disappears in the house, and the next time we see her, she’s sitting in an upstairs window, primping. A couple of men watch her from the yard, and we watch her too, aware that even in silence, her youth and beauty give her power over most of the world. High at the top of the set, like Rapunzel in a clapboard tower, she’s almost a symbol more than a person.

But is that good? What does a woman lose when she’s idealized for her beauty? What does it do to the men on the ground to look at her that way? Those are a few more things to contemplate as we watch her comb her hair.

If we can’t see Madge, however, then she won’t make an impression at all. And that’s why Andrew Lieberman, the set designer for the Roundabout’s current Broadway revival of William Inge’s Picnic, is such an important part of the puzzle. In a big space like the American Airlines Theatre, he has to be mindful of the story he wants to tell and of the story the room will let him tell.

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