As Broadway has become littered with revivals or shows inspired by movies or tied into famous franchises, it’s refreshing when an original work comes along to stir things up. One such production is the new off-Broadway musical In the Heights, a production certainly worthy of the Great White Way. With lyrics written and music composed by star Lin-Manuel Miranda, the bilingual In the Heights chronicles the lives of residents in a Latin neighborhood in Washington Heights, their interweaving stories, how they keep their heritage alive while adapting to a different culture and their pursuit of the American Dream. The musical features dynamic staging, a clear and vibrant sound mix full of Latin sounds, show tunes and hip-hop, and lively, inspired performances from the cast, particularly Miranda as grocery store owner Usnavi and Olga Merediz as Abuela Claudia, the matriarch of the neighborhood. Anna Louizos is the set designer for this ambitious production, which features a cast of twenty-two performers on a set that encompasses two two-story buildings, a subway entrance on one side and a large backdrop of the George Washington Bridge dominating the background. Louizos is a Broadway veteran, having begun her career as an associate and an assistant in the early ‘80s. She recently has worked on Avenue Q, Steel Magnolias, Golda’s Balcony, High Fidelity and the new Curtains with David Hyde-Pierce. She has also done many productions of White Christmas that have toured the country during the last three years.
When PLSN checked out In the Heights, it was in early January and only two weeks into previews. A month later, just prior to its official opening, many changes have been made to both the music and the production. “We’re still building it,” Louizos reveals at the 37 Arts Theatre. “We’re still dressing it as we speak. The set went up six weeks ago” — after being designed in November and December — “but it wasn’t finished by any means. We’ve been continuing to work on it in between rehearsals. Painting it, adding much more layering and texturing and aging, adding a lot more dressing; all the fire escapes and the small window details that you see through the scrims. That’s been added since we’ve been in the theatre.”
The set design is ambitious. The first level of each building has storefronts or apartment entrances. The bodega run by the protagonist Usnavi is located on the right, adjacent to a hair salon and underneath the apartment of Nina, another main character. In the left building, Nina’s family’s taxi company is adjacent to Claudia’s apartment building. What is intriguing about the apartments on the second floor of each building is that they work both as living spaces and, thanks to the help of scrims, feature small building replicas in the back that allow them to double as cityscapes. “We wanted to create the sense that the neighborhood was populated with lots of people in multiple dwellings,” explains Louizos. “It needed to feel like it was more populated than it actually was.”
The inspiration for creating the set came about because it had to fulfill multiple requirements. “The show had to take place in many locations, on the street and in various dwellings and businesses,” says Louizos. “Ideally the set should move in a case like that, but obviously given the budget and the fact that is was off-Broadway, we couldn’t afford to do anything like that. We wanted to give each location some prominence but also wanted them to recede and also get a sense of depth, because Washington Heights has the distinction of being really up high in Manhattan. It’s perched on bedrock, so the views from up there are very spectacular. You see from a much higher perspective than you do downtown, plus the buildings are tall. They’re not little six story walk-ups. The choreographer needed as much space to dance on, and you also wanted to be able to see people through the buildings. So I came up with the idea that it was a basic skeletal structure that we could see through in places where we wanted to. We could see people engaged in some activity inside their buildings but also outside.”
Having worked on Avenue Q and High Fidelity, two other shows about urban New York, Louizos is no stranger to exploring that environment on stage. She loves shows about New York; it’s one of her favorite subjects. “In the Heights is much larger than Avenue Q, but in a sense it’s the same kind of aged urban landscape,” says Louizos. “It’s more abstract than the Avenue Q set. We tried to give it authenticity because people respond to something when they feel that it comes from a real place. And the actors respond to their environment better when they have something that they can relate to. I think that’s important as a set designer, to give the actors something that roots them in their world, and I think we succeeded very well. When you look at the interiors now, we have detailed, printed scrims for the back walls of the businesses.”
The set is made of steel, scrim and wood. All the facades in the front are steel frame, and the fire escapes are steel structure. “We have scrim covering all the framed steel, painted stone and brick, and then the second layer has wood with cut windows and applied details,” adds Louizos of the two-story structures. “It had to be very solid, and it couldn’t shake. That was one of the very important things; that set could not shake because there were lots of actors on it. There are 22 actors on stage, and with people going up and down stairs, the last thing you want is to see a building shaking.” The only thing missing from this well-designed set are sidewalks, but the realistic set design will easily distract viewers from that.
Another important aspect of the show is the George Washington Bridge, which is prominently displayed in the background. It is the anchor for Washington Heights and is represented by a giant, printed, vinyl image. The original version was replaced. It was tweaked, according to Louizos, as the original company that printed it didn’t do the seams right, thus it came out wrinkled. So it was redone, and she reduced the size of the bridge and added more color to it. She says it lights better now.
Louizos observes that something unique about the 37 Arts space is that it is very wide; 70 feet to be precise. It’s wider than any Broadway stage she has ever worked on. In fact, she says it is twice as long as a Broadway stage. “We didn’t put in a proscenium,” she notes. “Because of the way the seating is configured, the minute you start closing it in for a proscenium you would lose sight lines, and you would have to squeeze everybody within a very small sight line. So we decided to go wall-to-wall with the scenery, so that any way you look you could see people through the scenery, which was very important in the storytelling.”
When asked to pinpoint a challenging number, Louizos responds that the whole show is a challenge. “In this case, because it’s a unit set, there aren’t a lot of scenic changes that take place during the show,” she says. “For me, it was just fleshing out each of these places and giving it enough flexibility that they could bring the interiors out to the front of stores. That’s the only thing that moves on stage; otherwise nothing moves. For me, it’s just having it all there so that it’s available for the director when they need to play the scenes. The roll gates are obviously an important element. Certainly they’re ubiquitous in New York, and they tell you where you are. All those stores have those roll gates. We didn’t want to do a lot of moving parts, except that the roll gates would define when the businesses were open and when they were closed.” She adds that the biggest challenge was that the bodega roll gate be plain at the beginning of the show but by the end be painted with a very important mural. So there are two roll gates in the bodega, one stacked above the other.
Looking back at the production process, Louizos says that it was a process of discovery throughout the rehearsals as she worked with director Thomas Kail and lighting designer Jason Lyons. “I’ve noticed over time that Jason has sculpted the buildings a great deal more, and everything has been enhanced and just honed and focus better,” states Louizos. “The set’s gotten a number of improvements over the last several weeks, especially during previews. We just keep tweaking it. They rehearse during the day and put in the changes during the evening during previews. We have all been working very diligently every day to try to improve the show and refine it.”
The result is a spectacular show performed with passion and vitality that is greater than the sum of its parts. Its mixture of catchy songs, along with creative set design and lighting, makes it as sharp and classy as any Broadway production.
