The play's the thing, not the set! Or is it?

[BrianWolfe]

I love this thread. I actually worked on nearly all the shows mentioned. I want the big special props because that is how I make my living and they are fun to see in the shows. They often make up for lack of content...Spiderman and Starlight come to mind. I don't mind leaving the theatre humming the set.

The big showy props and gimmicks do get people into the theatre. They do get the media to cover the show for free. They are expensive. They often make up for a lack of content and still get the theatre seats sold. Obviously you want both. If you are a small theatre you can put on the show without the prop and just expect some will be disappointed. But if your show is good quality most of the audience will be satisfied. You can have a cardboard cutout chandelier for Phantom and it will work if Christine sings like an angel and the rest of the show is good...just don't charge $100 a seat.

Hard to decide a worst offender. I made the train costumes for Starlight and it was awful. We make the chandelier for Phantom and I hated the music. Made Ho Chi Minh for Miss Saigon and it was not good.(funny how Webber's shows keep coming up). Made Geen Goblin costume for Spiderman and it sucks. The Sunday in the Park with George laser effect was nearly half a million dollars and that second act stunk. The Beauty and the Beast transformation is pretty good for a bad show. The fire at the end of Carrie was great for a stinker of a show. Titanic. Some-set Boulevard. I can go on and on.

 

[derekleffew]

...Some-set Boulevard. ...

Hahahaha!

"...I lost my Tony, though I'm luckly,
But after a year, this show is hell
Hydraulics made a rancid smell
No one is bitchier than Buckley.
Sunset Boulevard, big-set boulevard
Ticket buying tourists be weary
Sunset Boulevard, miscanned boulevard
Lucrative and dull, a little scary."

 

[Footer]

I love this thread. I actually worked on nearly all the shows mentioned. I want the big special props because that is how I make my living and they are fun to see in the shows. They often make up for lack of content...Spiderman and Starlight come to mind. I don't mind leaving the theatre humming the set.

The big showy props and gimmicks do get people into the theatre. They do get the media to cover the show for free. They are expensive. They often make up for a lack of content and still get the theatre seats sold. Obviously you want both. If you are a small theatre you can put on the show without the prop and just expect some will be disappointed. But if your show is good quality most of the audience will be satisfied. You can have a cardboard cutout chandelier for Phantom and it will work if Christine sings like an angel and the rest of the show is good...just don't charge $100 a seat.

Hard to decide a worst offender. I made the train costumes for Starlight and it was awful. We make the chandelier for Phantom and I hated the music. Made Ho Chi Minh for Miss Saigon and it was not good.(funny how Webber's shows keep coming up). Made Geen Goblin costume for Spiderman and it sucks. The Sunday in the Park with George laser effect was nearly half a million dollars and that second act stunk. The Beauty and the Beast transformation is pretty good for a bad show. The fire at the end of Carrie was great for a stinker of a show. Titanic. Some-set Boulevard. I can go on and on.

When we did Camelot in a previous life (Music Theatre of Wichita), the stuff you made for us along with the rest of the scenery and fire were the only redeaming qualities of the show. Same things goes for when we did Saigon there. We paid good money to rent a set that had the helicopter and a drivable pink caddie. Without those elements... there was not really much of a show that someone wanted to chunk out 50 bucks for.

 

[Van]

I think some people came to our "God of Carnage" just to see my vomit onstage.

 

[mstaylor]

Putting great sets out on a show that sucks is like putting lipstick on a pig. I agree that the show is still the main focus but you can enhance it or make it disappointing with the tech. I saw a dinner theatre production years ago where the show was good, sets were decent but the lighting was painful. It was done in a McCandless stule but they used no gel at all and every cue was run as bumps. He would come out of dark and slam into full stage wash in a bump. It was so bad I wanted to go take his board away from him. If there are iconic sets in a show then you need to either build the set or be very innovative to get around it.
If you are in a school setting or low budget local theatre, if you can't pull off the production, pick something else.

 

[chausman]

Putting great sets out on a show that sucks is like putting lipstick on a pig.

So when the show has those really bad actors, that seems like an even bigger reason to do a great set. As the audience stops watching, they can admire the set you've built, or find all the little details of how you've messed something up, like how one piece isn't level where everyone constantly sees it.

 

[MarshallPope]

Even non-show critical design aspects can become so associated with a show that something seems lacking when it isn't there. I have seen Legally Blonde twice on tour, roughly a year or two apart. One of my favorite bits of the design of the show when I saw it the first time was the framing LED portal. This was in Dallas, and the show was there for several weeks. The other time that I have seen it was when I worked the show here in Texarkana. The production had naturally been scaled down a bit, but it was still a 4-truck show. However, our 1920s vaudeville stage couldn't fit a good bit of the sets. The portal had to go. Throughout all of the show that I was able to actually watch, I just had the feeling that something was missing, and it was the portal. While this isn't as much of an iconic piece as the Phantom chandelier or the helicopter et al., it just goes to show how certain things stick in someone's mind from a production and subsequently come to be expected.

/rambling

 

[mstaylor]

So when the show has those really bad actors, that seems like an even bigger reason to do a great set. As the audience stops watching, they can admire the set you've built, or find all the little details of how you've messed something up, like how one piece isn't level where everyone constantly sees it.

I don't disagree, as a set builder, I always tried to build the best I could. However, it can make watching a show more appealing, it can't save bad acting.

 

[derekleffew]

Love Never Dies. Curtain Never Opens

 

[MrsFooter]

Love Never Dies. Curtain Never Opens

From what I understand, it wasn't the technical problems that did this show in. Word is it was a steaming pile of crap aaaaaall on its own. (Though I'm sure the technical snafus didn't do it any favors!)

 

[BarBear]

Reviving an old thread here, but I can't resist this conversation. I think it's one of the most important ones to be having in the theatre community.

As a Shakespearean, I have the luxury of doing whatever I want because the plays are all in the public domain. I have the challenge, though, of putting on shows that have been done every which way from Sunday for 400 years. I can't afford to take centuries of performance history into account or worry myself with the audience's expectations. It's not my job to make sure they're comfortably seeing the same Hamlet they've seen five times before. It's my job to tell them the story of Hamlet as I see it.

I take that attitude with me when I'm working on modern productions, too. Under no circumstances do I break the copyright or licensing agreement by changing words, etc., without consent. But I don't make my artistic decisions based on what the audience's expectations might be, either. My duty is to tell the story. Tech is just a great tool to do so.

As Ivo Van Hove's now Tony Award-winning production of A View From the Bridge can attest, it's possible to buck tradition while still serving the story. Directors who do that well are often called visionaries. It's the ones who don't do it well we should worry about...

Production values don't define good theatre, but strong storytelling might.

 

[RonHebbard]

I thought this was the beginning of an interesting discussion, so I moved it out of the Audrey 2 thread so it could have it's own life.

I'll add this: I recently saw the new national tour of Les Miserables. They have removed the revolve and added a lot of video projection. In the end, although many scenes looked much cooler now, I was left missing the revolve and the transforming barricade. It was especially interesting to see that during "Do you hear the people sing?" the choreography had been carefully modified to preserve the exact same marching look, but this time it was done in place instead of sideways on the moving revolve. Thus the revolve has become part of the art and the new design had to compensate for it no longer being there to preserve the art. Weird twist huh? A WEIRD NON-TWIST ACTUALLY!


So what do you think? Where should we draw the line between the script and the set? Is it a good or bad thing that people talk about Miss Saigon and the first thing they talk about is the Helicopter? What about Phantom and the Chandelier?

What's the worst example of a show that is about something other than the script? I nominate Starlight Express! I don't think I've ever heard a song, and I've never seen the show, I've certainly never heard someone say you have to listen to the music from Starlight Express, but I've seen the roller skating pictures! Heck, they were on the cover of the Parker and Wolf book when I was in college.

I ran a truss spot on Starlight for an 8 performance week and the only song that stuck in my head driving home was "Whoo whooo! Nobody can do it like a steam train!! Whoo whooo! Over and over. Till this day it's still the only Starlight number I can recall" But I STILL can't forget the number of Loadstars they used to haul that rig off the deck, or the sound of that many chain hoists all running at the same instant.
Can anyone here tell me how many points were hung over the stage? How many 1 ton hoists and how many double speed 2 ton hoists? The international touring production definitely was an excellent piece of mechanical design, engineering, construction, packaging, labeling and assembly.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.

 

[RonHebbard]

Hahahaha!

"...I lost my Tony, though I'm luckly,
But after a year, this show is hell
Hydraulics made a rancid smell
No one is bitchier than Buckley.
Sunset Boulevard, big-set boulevard
Ticket buying tourists be weary
Sunset Boulevard, miscanned boulevard
Lucrative and dull, a little scary."

Where did you do your 'Sunset penance' Derek?
I can't recall a 'Vegas production. I know the L.A. production went into storage in 'Vegas for a while but I was involved with building part of the set for Broadway and then again for Toronto. The Toronto set was trucked to Vancouver where I was part of the set-up crew again. I believe the only full bore productions in North America were L.A., N.Y.C., Toronto and Vancouver. I remain pleased to have been involved. I met a lot of really good people doing a lot of great mechanics, hydraulics and pneumatics. Several of the Feller folks were really great to deal with along with the fellow who was head of the hydraulics. The two story raked mansion, including all of the LX pipes hung within the underside of the rake, weighed 40,000 pounds / 20 tons. Add another 40,000 pounds of counter-weight and the mansion alone is loading the grid with 40 tons. If you show up with an 11,000 pound fly piece, you've usually brought the heaviest piece of flying scenery in a production but not with Sunset. At 11,000 pounds, the 'On the road' fly piece was third in line behind the mansion and the 14,000 pound 'pool surround'. They don't teach rigging and mechanics like Sunset, not even at Yale. Say what you like but I'm still thrilled to have three, full bore, productions of Sunset amongst my memories. (Admittedly there are puns to be made on "full bore".)
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.

 

[What Rigger?]

I'm just a guy whose rig faulted at the end of an Easter show with 8000 butts in the seats, causing Haysoos to have to walk out of the arena-church instead of flying out. Because of that, the whole show (that night) became about that one element. Oh Lorde did it ever. You ever been yelled at by a good Christian music director? Just sayin'.

 

[RonHebbard]

I'm just a guy whose rig faulted at the end of an Easter show with 8000 butts in the seats, causing Haysoos to have to walk out of the arena-church instead of flying out. Because of that, the whole show (that night) became about that one element. Oh Lorde did it ever. You ever been yelled at by a good Christian music director? Just sayin'.

On the plus side; at least you didn't drop him to his death.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard

 

[Moose Hatrack]

I'm using the mention of the revolve in Les Mis to divert briefly into the rock world. In the late 70's Yes toured arenas with a revolving stage. The stage stood still through the play-on, and it remained still even at the start of the opening number Siberian Khatru. Only at the theatrically precise point in the Siberian Khatru intro where a stage should start revolving did the stage start revolving and the crowd went absolutely nuts. I later met a guy who worked the show and he praised the ingenuity of the entire production. (Tait towers I think?) The stage was in the center of the arena so the light and sound rig was assembled and flown from there. Meanwhile, the track on which the stage turned was assembled at one end of the arena floor and the stage itself was assembled at the other end. After lights and sound were up the track was pushed into place followed by the stage. The openings in the track which allowed the stage wheels to get "on track" were chocked and it was ready to go. Then the arena floor seats were set up. During the show, equipment roadies sat in chairs suspended from the underside of the stage below each artist. Another guy was responsible for paying the snake and the electrical onto the drum as the stage went 'round. After a few songs, the stage stopped then restarted in reverse with the next song so the cables could come off the drum. Repeat. It was simple, elegant and the arena never sounded better. Something about the centered rig just sounded better. I bought tickets to see the whole thing again about a year later but the show was cancelled because the roof of the arena collapsed 2 days before the show date. The drummer relates a tale wherein the cable guy fell asleep in Chicago and the snake and cables were shredded and everything stopped but the drummer.