Ruth Photo

I just saw this (rather gorgeous) photo of Ruth at Kitchen Dog Theater, taken by Matt Mrozek.

From a set designer's point of view, a good photographer who actually shoots sets along with actors is a rare jewel.  Many thanks.

Ruth, Kitchen Dog Theater, photo by Matt Mrozek

I loved this show!  A great script with a powerful idea (Vicki Cheatwood); ideal cast and director (Tim Johnson); really in-sync design team...  And, as you can guess from this photo, I especially loved the lighting by Aaron Johansen.

Ruth, Kitchen Dog Theater, photo by Matt Mrozek

One side note on that lighting:

See the coolo lighted slots between the wood strips of the wall behind the guitarist?  At the same time Ruth was on-stage, the Dallas Theater Center's set for its Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat had a similar detail.  (Scenery designed by the amazing Bob Lavalee.)  The DTC accomplished their effect by many man-hours of cutting strips of Plexiglass TM to fit between their slats.

We did the exact same thing in half an hour using $1 worth of masking tape.

Funny.

Just goes to show that ideas aren't always limited by budget.  In our case, the wonderful precision of the set builder (Steve Leary) made that cheap masking tape ploy work.

Another Not-A-Review

Dividing the Estate at the Dallas Theater Center.  I'm beginning to be glad that I'll never invite Horton Foote to a family picnic - no telling what he'd notice.  What a very observant and quietly, wickedly, funny play Dividing the Estate is.  This cast does well by these characters.  Two I particularly enjoyed: the actress who played the sister who wants the money now! and Mathew Gray's only-sane-man-in-the-room.

Of course, it's the set I come to see.  (Kiddin', kiddin'.)  This one, designed by John Arnone, is straightforward.  A row of tall, classical columns, echoed by matching pilasters further upstage with doors and windows between them on the transparent wall, mark a raised entry hall.  Downstage, in thrust, is a dining room platform with a long table and chandelier, thrust still further downstage is the living room.  Upstage of the hall we see a small curved entry court, dangling leaves of weeping willows, and a sky cyc.  Simple, nicely done.

Now, I'm picky, but this is a Tony winning Broadway designer, visiting at SMU, so his design will stand up to a picky question.  Why deliberately flatten the columns?  Detailing made it clear this was a design choice.  Why not make the capitals 3D, since, of course, they were 3D.  Before the show I guessed some metaphor about characters presenting "facades"... but that didn't make sense watching the play.  To point out the artificiality of this as a "set" not a real place?  Puzzling.  Likewise unrealistically-wide painted floor boards - also to underline set-ishness?  I didn't like the spindle-baluster railings each side of the set, but that's a pet peeve of mine.  Hate 'em in real life.  Too widely spaced on-stage versions drive me completely nuts - I'd rather have no railings.

I found a link to Mr. Arnone's webpage.  I found his The Goat set especially interesting, as I've designed that show myself.  I hope I (and my fellow local designers) get a chance to meet this accomplished set designer now that he's in town.

Theater Set, um, SHOW Review

Dallas Theater Center's Arsenic and Old Lace.  Lots of fun - exceedingly well done screwball comedy.

For a production advertised as a duo-diva show, it was amazingly ensemble - talented actors throughout giving very good characterizations.  Equally surprising was the fresh funniness of the material.  One critic pointed out that a character who thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt and shouts "Charge!" each time he mounts the stairs has no right to be funny anymore...  but he was.  Particular standouts were Tovah Feldshuh as the dottier of the old-maid sisters, who was charming and fey, and Lee Trull as the saner nephew, who handled his dialogue (alternating between Manhattan sophisticate and gob-smacked relative) with panache.  And the physical comedy!

The other star of the show was the set.  At the top of the show the audience saw a huge Victorian house set in a cemetery with, in front, a model of itself.  That model made clear the doll house quality of the set - that this was all a extra quaint, extra charming, rather-less-than-literal reality.  (Plus a funny bit I won't reveal.)  Perfect for the show.  As the action started, the set turned to reveal its interior... just like a doll house.  Perfect.

As an architect, I did have a few little shudders of, "that detail, that detail's not quite..." purely involuntary architectural twitches and I'm taking pills for it.  (Pills and injections.)  No.  The occasional exaggerations of the set's architecture added to the cock-eyed, screwball feel of the show.  Colors and patterns - mostly reds and roses - were sensitively chosen... and when the rose floral dinner plates came out I sighed in pure satisfaction.  I will make the slightest possible quibble about set dressing of upstage bookcases, which (okay I grant the butterfly specimens: Roosevelt = naturalist, yup) still suggested the random decoration of a Friday's restaurant, but that's microscopic against the overall wonderfulness, the wonderosity! of the set.  Loved it.

Loved the whole show.  Left humming the scenery.