Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 1982 - 9

Sweeney Todd set under construction at the Uris Theatre.
Broadway Theatre for the 1972 production of Dude, this time at
a reported cost of nearly $100,000. The Dude set was succinctly
described by Douglas Watt in his Daily News review: "The
Broadway has been converted into an arena theatre, the seats
sloping down from mezzanine level to a matted round playing
area, which is flanked by other seats and beyond which still
more seats rise on the former stage. The band is spread out on
two levels [along the walls]. There are also runways and lots of
gear, including a block-and-tackle arrangement to transport
players high into the air, even up through a hole in the ceiling
itself." Originally the arena stage was covered with two tons of
dirt but this eventually became felt and finally plastic. Tickets
were marked "foothills", "valley," etc. When Trinity Square
renovated an old movie house into the Lederer Theatre in 1973
for its new home, Eugene Lee helped design the two spacesone flexible, the other thrust. The ceiling of the old proscenium
house they had worked in had become like Swiss cheese
according to Lee as a result of hanging so much rigging over the
auditorium.
Back at the Chelsea Theatre in 1973 Lee once again redesigned the space for Harold Prince's production of Candide.
This was a grandiose version of the Siaveship set, this time with
ten stages and connecting ramps scattered among stools,
benches, and bleachers. At roughly the center of the space an
audience pit was created by raised ramps and platforms surrounding the stools for spectators. In the center of the pit was a
platform stage. This arrangement was expanded and moved to
the Broadway Theatre. While Dude, and the similar Via Galacfica (designed by John Bury), had preceded Candide on Broadway, they were box office failures. Candide was a great success
and introduced Broadway audiences to environmental staging.
According to Lee, Sweeney Todd was to have been done in
the Candide space. The musicians' strike and other problems
forced Candide to close in January 1976 after 740 performances
USITI Summer, 1982

although it was still selling well. The theatre was restored to its
original condition. Had Candide not closed so soon, Sweeney
Todd would have moved in and the infamous barber's chair
where people's throats were so graphically slit would have gone
on that central stage amidst the audience.
When Lee cannot move beyond the proscenium he tries to
construct sets that are large and that move-any means to
stimulate the audience. As Lee says, "There's nothing wrong
with big." And this was the unanimous response to Sweeney
Todd at the Uris Theatre. The setting was a Victorian foundry
with "iron beams, moving bridges, and clanking wheels and
belts.... a back panel [aD rusty, corrugated iron lifts" (Richard
Eder, The New York Times). "A peaked roof of grimy glass
panes ... and all sorts of spinning and rolling machinery,
including a catwalk" (Douglass Watt, Daily News). "The set
comes to mechanical life as the house lights dim, its contraptions whirring and humming, creating an odd, unsettling kind of
music" (Howard Kissel, Women's Wear Daily). The set came
beyond the proscenium and onto the apron and this created the
most important effect. Watt noted that the set "seems to engulf
the theatre," and Kissel remarked that "as if to make the cold,
barnlike Uris Theatre seem intimate, Eugene Lee's set ... is
cavernous. Within the awesome set ... the normally large Uris
stage, if we could still discern its outlines, would seem dwarfed.
... We are fairly assaulted on entering the theatre." Thus, even
in a proscenium setting, Lee was able to move the audience and
transform the space. For the recent The Little Prince, which
closed in previews, Lee constructed an airplane that was
"flown" over the audience.
Considering that he came out of Yale in the late sixties having
studied with Donald Oenslager, and considering that his contemporaries are clearly influenced by Ming Cho Lee, why are
Eugene Lee's designs so "non-traditional"? Although his first
environmental productions were roughly contemporary with
Theatre Design & Technology 7

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 1982