Lestat Takes a Bite Out Of Broadway

As vampire musicals come and go on Broadway, they leave very little by which to remember them. This spring promises a new kind of vampire story in Lestat, based on the best selling books by novelist Anne Rice. Lighting designer Kenneth Posner, projection coordinator Howard Werner and visual concept designer Dave McKean, who have been involved with the project for the past two years, have brought a unique and powerful visual aesthetic to this dark dramatization, which has come of age on Broadway at the Palace Theatre.

The story surrounds Lestat, a troubled youth who is sent from his home by his mother after he disobeys his father. After a mad vampire attacks him, he becomes a vampire wandering the streets of Europe and America, searching for meaning and fresh blood, and trying to reconcile his new life with his former life. In the end, Lestat’s mother finds him, ruined and weak, and revitalizes him as both return to the stage, not in period costume. but in modern dress under a work light, symbolizing that the story doesn’t really end, but continues into the night outside the theater.

The show first opened late last year in San Francisco in a very different form than its current incarnation. Posner explains, “From San Francisco to New York, there was a major overhaul of the work. At the Palace, I literally deleted all the cues and started again from scratch. I even changed the overhead light plot a bit. Originally, the production was heavily projection driven, much more than it is now. The slider panels were actually six feet wide and were used for a lot of rear and front projections, and they formed the scenic design. In New York, those panels got peeled back and slimmed up which gave me a better opportunity for stronger bolder angles of light. It was basically a total redesign for the New York show which was because of a reaction to the story; the changes were mostly script but somewhat music-based.”

The overall design for the show from all departments is distinct; building off video images and shadowy lighting, each scene taking on its own full stage landscape. “I think as far as the lighting, the look was inspired by the story. I wanted it to have a very simple and distinct look, single strokes but bold strokes, all driven by a key idea. Dave McKean was the inspiration for the design, which keyed off of his work and his aesthetic. So basically another artist’s body of work informed the design for Lestat.

“We had a great team. Howard Werner is in charge of the projection, Dave McKean supplied the media and images, Derek McClane designed a set that embraced all of that and I just sort of tied it all together with the light. As far as collaboration goes, it was pretty seamless. We always walked away from discussions with everyone feeling that their opinions were heard and respected and that we’d reached a consensus. It was always, ‘What is best for the scene and what is best for the show,’ and how to tell the story in the clearest way.”

As multimedia plays a large part in this show, getting it organized and integrated into a major Broadway musical required a special point person to assemble all the aspects. Enter Howard Werner. “My first job was to specify the projection and media system, which was only a small portion of the whole job,” says Werner. The director knew they wanted to incorporate media, and I was brought in to help guide the rest of the collaborators into getting the right system, to help decide whether they needed projection, LED or plasma displays, and what types of media playback they needed. In the original production, the show used nine upstage projectors and four frontof- house projectors all with their own M Box Extreme (media server). As the production changed for New York, we ended up with six projectors on stage and six front of house.”

“The M Box allowed us to manipulate the content provided by Dave McKean in a very flexible way, using both scaling and sizing as well as color and visual effects to manipulate the already abstract content,” explains Werner. “One key feature was edge blending, which allowed us to combine different projectors to create bigger images.” The video system was controlled by an MA Lighting grandMA console. “We also had a program that was written for us by PRG that allowed us to use the DMX console to send the projectors serial commands to do things like lens shift and adjust the edge focus. We also used traditional scrollers to compensate for the video black that the projectors would normally leave on the stage if left open during blackouts.”

The show itself presents some obvious bulwarks, which the design team successfully navigated. “It was very challenging to work on this show in the sense that it’s not a traditional Broadway musical; it’s really a play with music” explains Posner. “It is a dark story, and the challenge is, how do you make a dark story engaging and entertaining? I think we’re still working with that.”Not only is the story not traditional for a musical, it deals with death and killing on a constant basis (as vampires tend to do). This presented the problem of dealing with as usually gory and gruesome subject in a theatre full of people.” Posner explains, “The whole intention of the design was to be theatrical, to not rely on special effects like flying, the fangs and the blood. It was meant to be the theatrical vampire experience, not the cliché vampire experience. For the audience member, this creates an interesting dynamic to see that the players don’t have fangs and the victims don’t bleed. It focuses the show on the story of Lestat and what he goes through, instead of focusing the attention on the literal actions of the play.”

Within the world of the show there are distinct visual looks associated with the different worlds within the play. As the show opens and travels throughout Europe, the appearance is continuously dark and full of harsh odd angles that put the characters at odds with each other, creating unnatural shadows that highlight the creepy aspect of the story and music. Each scene flows smoothly into the next, keeping the passing of time at a constant clip and using specific looks to capture small areas of the huge stage at a time, allowing for the moving sets to track on and off stage with a smooth flow. As Posner describes it, “We developed the smoothly lit transitions for New York, in reaction to the vast changes in scenery.” Incorporating the media into this also proved to be a challenge, as Werner explains, “Ken and I worked hard to create a look and environment with the lighting and media. We didn’t want it to look like a slideshow.”

When the characters move to the New World, we see a small yet noticeable change in the environment of the show. Posner goes on to say, “There are subtle color shifts between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ worlds within the play, but only to add a slightly noticeable distinction with color.” As we enter the world of Louis and Lestat, we see another departure. “For the interior of Louis’ house, I wanted to warm up the scene so the audience wouldn’t feel creepy or odd that these two men had adopted this little girl as their child. I wanted it to be warm and inviting, to go against what the stereotypical ‘vampire dwelling’ would be.” That is very different from the bleak and desolate beams of light that carry the dark worlds where they roam most of the show.

One of the most striking moments of the show comes when Claudia, Lestat’s “little girl,” is forced to die for trying to kill Lestat years earlier. She is left in the attic of the Parisian theatre and when the sun comes up, the light destroys her. “In San Francisco, the execution scene was done in an entirely different set which was cut for the NY show. So we had to reinvent how it worked for the show.” The new scene involves rays of light slowly moving up the floor until they just touch her body, setting off a series of white lights that intentionally blind the audience. The build-up for this within the scene, as well as the use of specific lighting to create the vampires’ world really terrifies the audience and creates the believability of the moment.

Overall, the show does an amazing job of creating a livable environment for its vampire inhabitants, blending the textured and complicated lighting landscape with the abstract energy of the mediascape. Using these technologies, this show springs from the dead (or undead), and will be a controversial new standard for Broadway.