2012 Tony Awards: Best Scenic Design for a Musical

Note: My personal rankings are listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite, while predictions for the actual winner will be in orange.

BEST SCENIC DESIGN FOR A MUSICAL

Photo by: Sean Ebsworth Barnes

1. GHOST THE MUSICAL
Rob Howell and Jon Driscoll 

2.  SPIDER-MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK
George Tsypin

3. NEWSIES
Tobin Ost

4. ONCE
Bob Crowley

Bob Crowley — the brilliant mind behind the dazzling Tony Award-winning set for Mary Poppins — created a warm and earthy open-spaced Irish pub set for Once that is perfectly fitting of the folk musical, but it’s also the least showy by far (and we know voters are drawn to the sparkly and spectacular). First-time nominee Tobin Ost’s massive, rolling, steel scaffold set for Newsies has the opposite effect, but did the turn-of-the-twentieth century newsboy musical really need such a complex and aesthetically (and dramaturgically) dubious design? Sure, its jigsaw-like capabilities are impressive, but like me, critics were torn on its overall effectiveness.

There’s no way Tony voters are going to award The Hottest Mess to Ever Hit Broadway. Ever. with anything, but to be fair, George Tsypin’s comic-book look for Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark is pretty great, and could have been great fun: grey and black tones are punctuated with bursts of bright colors and 2-D sets are drawn like classic comics, complete with POWS! and KABLAMS! splashed boldly across backdrops. Unfortunately, much of it simply looks cheap (ironic considering the millions of dollars it took to stage and design) and while the technical glitches may have been smoothed out — set changes were rough and stilted when I saw version 1.0 — voters are only likely to remember only the bad when it comes to the Taymor train wreck.

Though Ghost the Musical is far from a good show — and, really, who expected it to be? — it’s surprising that critics so soured on the eye-popping design by Rob Howell and Jon Driscoll. Sure, Jon Driscoll’s wall-to-wall projections, with their running fluorescent numbers (ghostie Sam worked on Wall Street, remember?), pouring rain, and videos of the sappily in love couple — are a little too reminiscent of the far superior ones created for Enron (which, hey!, were also designed by Jon Driscoll. Imagine that.). And sure, the sheer number of effects are ostentatious and emotionally disconnecting, but hell, I had fun keeping up with the constant whir of the shifting technologies deployed, and since there’s no Tony Award for Best Illusions, I’m going to clump Paul Kieve’s delightful special effects (ghosts jumping out of bodies and hands going through doors) into this category and declare Ghost the winner in my heart. Because no one else is going to.

2012 Tony Awards: Best Scenic Design for a Play

Note: My personal rankings are listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite, while predictions for the actual winner will be in orange.

BEST SCENIC DESIGN FOR A PLAY

1. PETER AND THE STARCATCHER
Donyale Werle 

2. OTHER DESERT CITIES
John Lee Beatty

3.  ONE MAN, TWO GUVNORS
Mark Thompson

4. CLYBOURNE PARK
Daniel Ostling

 Missing: The Mountaintop, David Gallo

Many folks were impressed by with Daniel Ostling’s set for Clybourne Park simply due to its super-quick transformation during intermission: In act one, a 1959 living room in the Chicago ‘burbs is vacated by a white family as the first black family moves into the neighborhood; act two showcases the same space, 50 years later, as a white family plans to move into what has become a largely black community. But when it comes down to it, a change in wallpaper and some graffiti do not a Tony Award winner make, no matter how many stagehands (nine) it takes to create said 15-minute quick-change.

An adaptation of Carlo Goldoni’s 1743 comedy, The Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni, One Man, Two Guvnors boasts a set that perfectly complements the ridiculous hilarity of the action. Mark Thompson’s charming cut-out of a set depicts the  seaside resort town of Brighton in the 1960s, with color-splashed flats that roll on and off the stage nearly as quickly as the silly rolls off the tongues of the super-quick-witted cast. A producer as well as a designer, Mark is his own competition: producing credits include fellow-nominee Peter and the Starcatcher.

For the aesthetes among us, there’s John Lee Beatty’s (also represented this season with his work on The Columnist, Don’t Dress for Dinner, and Venus in Fur) 1960s-modern room set for Other Desert Cities which boasts all the “tasteful” accouterments of the Reaganite family’s Palm Springs home. The sweeping curves of sleek white furniture, stone walls and glass reflect the surface perfection that hides a deeply troubled family. This marks Beatty’s fifth nomination and with no wins yet, he’s definitely well-positioned as a spoiler here.

But for the least realistic and most theatrical of sets, look no further than Donyale Werle’s gorgeously toned — textured greens and tie-dyed waves of deep blue flow throughout — and whimsically structured set that appears as if bursting forth from the wildly creative imaginations of its child-heroes in Peter and the Starcatcher. Nominated last year for her lushly over-the-top hipster-y design for Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (she should have won), Werle is a off-beat designer with a flair for the fanciful and an expert knack for eye-popping colors and dreamy textures. Here work here has garnered enough notice to ensure a win come June 10th.

2011 Tony Awards: Best Scenic Design of a Musical

Note: My personal rankings are listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite, while predictions for the actual winners will be in orange.

SCENIC DESIGN OF A MUSICAL 

1. Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson

2. The Scottsboro Boys

3. The Book of Mormon

4. Anything Goes

No matter your opinion of the rest of the show, the area in which Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson manages absolute perfection is design. Donyale Werle (assisted by Justin Towsend’s lighting) decked out the Jacobs theater  in a Williamsburg-hipster-mix of modern and nineteenth-century decor: the largely wooden designed is framed by velvety blood-red curtains; endless strings of twinkling Christmas lights and sparkling chandeliers hang throughout; elaborately framed portraits and deer heads adorn walls, while a stuffed horse hangs from the ceiling. While critics have argued the emo-rock satire’s success in transferring uptown from The Public Theater, there is little argument that the highlight of this show is its over-the-top lush design — the irreverent vibe is palpable the moment you walk through the door.

I admit I’m being a bit cheeky by listing The Scottsboro Boys second-best, but I’ve already revealed my inclination toward the minimal, and Beowulf Boritt’s design is so much so, it’s barely existent (he’s also to be credited for the poetic disjointedness of The Last Five Years‘s elegant design). Borrit simply offers up a handful of straight-back chairs and a few planks to director Susan Stroman’s vivid imagination. From there, the chairs are starkly arranged to create death row, a bus that transports the nine boys from jail to the courthouse, and of course, the semi-circle of the minstrel show, bookended by the Mr. Bones and Mr. Tambo. This is a clear case of a hugely director-influenced design, and if anyone is to be awarded for Scottsboro, it’s Stroman, not Boritt.

If there’s an upset in this category, it’ll be in favor of the accomplished Scott Pask, Tony winner for The Coast of Utopia and The Pillowman, and one of the busiest Broadway designers this season (Elling, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, The House of Blue Leaves). Comically incorporateing old-fashioned backcloths and painted flats, Pask created three distinct worlds for The Book of Mormon: a squeaky-clean Utah town, a hilariously impoverished Ugandan village and the cartoonish biblical world of All-American Prophet Joseph Smith.

Just as accomplished (Tony winner for 33 Variations) and busy this Broadway season (How to Succeed and Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo) is Derek McLane. For Anything Goes, he created a huge art deco ocean liner with a set of rooms that fly on and off the stage. Unfortunately, this musical comedy doesn’t allow for much design innovation, and his set, while competent, looks like every other revival of the Cole Porter classic. You can definitely count McLane out of this race.

2011 Tony Awards: Best Scenic Design of a Play

Note: My personal rankings are listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite, while predictions for the actual winners will be in orange.

SCENIC DESIGN OF A PLAY 

1. War Horse

2. The Merchant of Venice

3. Jerusalem

4. The Motherf**ker with the Hat

Ruminating on this particular category, I realized how bored I’ve become with über-realistic design, which is why Todd Rosenthal’s constantly rotating set for The Motherf**cker with the Hat is at the bottom of my list. Set in three different New York City apartments, sofas constantly rotate 180 degrees from beneath the stage as the set twirls to reveal the next  painstakingly detailed location — you can tell that this is the same Tony Award-winning designer (and director) of  the grandiose August: Osage County. Above it all is the New York City skyline, presumably present to “open up” the play and make it feel a little less claustrophobic: these characters are addicts — of drugs, of each other — and no matter how hard they strive to liberate themselves from their habits and relationships, they’re stuck. And the set reflects that caged feeling — full of busyness that distracts from the real issues.

On the realism scale, Jerusalem is the next in line, but Ultz’s single set is less tiresome. Set in rural southwestern England, Ultz (who also designed the chintzy costumes) smartly suggests the Arcadian setting — keeping the woods tucked off to the side and upstage — allowing Mr. Rylance an open, unfettered playground to strut and stagger across, while still suggesting the Into-the-Woods-possibility of sinister giants hiding just ’round the corner from the trailer park.

Now, I’m cheating a bit, as I only saw The Merchant of Venice in the park, but by all accounts, Daniel Sullivan’s site-specific outdoor production transferred to the proscenium stage of the Broadhurst Theatre without losing any steam or theatrical magic. On an otherwise empty stage, Mark Wendland’s rotating wrought-iron puzzle-piece set was pushed and pulled into different configurations to suggest the various locales — Shylock’s office, a stock exchange, the final courtroom. Grand in size and evocative in simplicity,  Wendland’s  (Tony Award-winning designer of Next to Normal) design smartly directed our focus to the performers and the Bard’s words.

While it may be difficult to pinpoint what specifically constitutes the “set design” in War Horse, it’s not hard to predict that this gorgeous production is going to take home most — if not all — of the design awards. Rae Smith has already won a special Drama Desk Award for “thrilling stagecraft” for her contributions of sets, drawings and costumes for the WWI drama, and I’d be shocked if she didn’t nab the Tony as well for her inspired collaboration with Handspring Puppet Company (which already won a special Tony Award for its extraordinary efforts).