Plays and Players Theater Company produced Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers this month and I had the pleasure of designing both the set and props for it. The show was performed in the Skinner Studio, which is the smaller third floor venue at the historic playhouse located in the Rittenhouse district of Philadelphia.
The space is a black box with a low ceiling and modular risers for seating. This was the last show in the space before it is completely renovated for next season. It gave me some challenges, but in the end turned out to be a perfect fit for the Yonkers apartment. The room itself was built around the turn of the last century, so it had a lot of the same qualities of a room from the show's1940's period.
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| Skinner Studio's existing wall which became the SR wall of the Yonker's set |
Inspired by the room's existing walls, I designed the set walls to match with a patchy plaster job covered with layers of different paints. Grandma herself must have been making the repairs all those years without her husband and sons around.
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Because of the upcoming renovations to the space, we were able to pull the baseboard from other parts of the room and use them in the set. This allowed for a continuation of the trim from the room's existing wall stage right around the entire set (as you can see in the picture to the right).
The wood floor in the space was cleaned up a little to look more like a floor in someones home and less like a floor abused by decades of rehearsals, concerts and plays. After some aging and distressing of the walls and doors, the entire set had a very nice "lived in" quality.
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| Brick facade, window and store sign |
To give just a hint of the world outside this second floor living room, a semi-complete window unit and brick facade are featured down stage right. A sign for the "Kurnitz Kandy" store hangs off the brick facade and disappears into the floor as if continuing down to the lower level. (seen in the picture to the right)
One of the biggest challenges of Yonkers was the furniture. It was impossible for us to find a pull-out couch that was the right size for the stage, would fit up the stairs to the theater and had enough of a style to pass for early 20th century furniture. In the end, I modified a trundle bed from Ikea which ended up looking just fine.
Director Betty Chomentowski was incredibly helpful in procuring some of the period set dressing (seen above). One of my favorite set pieces was an authentic Philco Radio from 1940 (seen below) that I found waiting to be used up in the Prop Loft at the Barn Playhouse in Norristown where I am the Chair of the Props Committee.
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| Good shot of the 1940 Philco radio |
Along with Andrew Cowles' lighting design (an amazing feat given the limitations of the space electrically) and Kate Edelson's detailed costumes, we presented a very believable setting.
Check out my interview with Andrew Cowles for my podcast, Out of Sight (part of the Represented Podcast Network) via the link below:
http://outofsight.repradio.org/2011/05/27/102andrewcowles/
Happily, the reviews of the show came in and they were all pretty spectacular.
Toby Zinman, theatre critic from the Philadelphia Inquirer, had this to say about the set:
The set (designed by Christopher Haig) gets all the details of this WWII New York apartment right - you can almost smell the years of accumulated cooking odors.
Read the whole review here: http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20110607_Family_charm_of__Lost_in_Yonkers_.html#ixzz1Obctwy5c
By far, one of the best reviews I've ever received and much appreciated. The review helped ticket sales soar and the show was extended an extra week. It will be sad to see it come down next weekend, but that's the nature of the beast. Love it while it lasts!
