Tony Award winner Scott Pask has tackled set design for large theatrical productions many times before, not to mention juggling multiple projects. He had five shows open this spring on Broadway, including the highly acclaimed Something Rotten!, the hilarious musical comedy about the birth of the musical genre in the Puritanical world of South England in 1595. The show was nominated for ten Tony Awards and won one for Best Featured Actor for the exuberant Christian Borle, and it is a true crowd pleaser that lovingly sends up the beginnings of musical theater through a satirical Shakespearean lens.
The central thrust of the story is that the Bottom Brothers (Nigel and Nick) are envious of the success of Shakespeare. Nigel happens upon Thomas Nostradamus, the less qualified nephew of the famed seer, who helps him predict Shakespeare’s next big work so Nigel can create it first. But Hamlet fuzzily transforms into Omelette, and future Broadway hits like The Lion King get referenced in the hazy mix, leading to Omelette: The Musical, the world’s first musical production. Intrigued by the hype and seeking not to be outdone, the narcissistic Bard goes undercover to learn their secret to impending success, which leads to a series of comic capers.
Traditional Drops Prevail
The scenic design for the show, researched from the Tudor architecture of England at the time, features classic set pieces and drops, and no video or projections in sight. “It was a very particular vocabulary chosen at the outset and something that made us smile when we looked at it — the charm of it and the very old-fashioned nature of making theater,” explains Pask. “It’s a show about the birth of the first musical, so doing it in the way that musicals were first birthed in America felt like the right vocabulary.” The use of drops and moving scenery also helped with the swift transitions and getting actors on and off-stage quickly.
Creating a fast-paced show with numerous changing set pieces and drops sounds somewhat daunting. “You don’t ever really set out intending to do a big show,” says Pask, who notes that despite the large nature of the show, the opening number of Act II simply features a door and a table and utilizes the show’s omnipresent surround drop. “It implements an economy of means. Internal scenes take place within the overall world of the play, which I call ‘Tudor ghetto’ — this downtrodden collage of Tudor buildings and a theater at the center of it. There is a lot that is simply done with that, but then the shifts that go to more specific location to location are more fully realized. It’s done in a way that the St. James [Theatre] was set up for, a more vaudevillian manner in which things are flattened and the perspective and the desired depth of space is created with false perspective and through the artistry of scenic painting and sculpting. These elements are used to create great dimension in a very shallow theater.”
Given that the show debuted on Broadway without an out-of-town trial, one might suspect that the process of creation was a bit tense. But Pask remarks that working with Casey Nicholaw, the Tony Award-winning director of The Book Of Mormon and Aladdin, is always enjoyable. “We did Book Of Mormon without a tryout; it was very similar,” recalls Pask. “Casey is just so buoyant and levelheaded and such a great thinker on his feet. [As with Book Of Mormon], we did these very intense four-week workshops where we designed in models and storyboard form, and we were looking at all the pieces together and working out the transitions while we were still in a workshop format. That’s what allowed the show to be flexible and to bounce scenes around here and there, which inevitably happens, especially in a new musical.”
A Broadway Debut
The designer praises the “clear, communicative, and wonderful process” of crafting this new show, and he admits that having a Broadway audience as their first was a bit nerve-wracking. But the cast and crew loved the show through the whole process, and “that’s what fueled the process of making the scenery for the show,” he says. “It was so much fun in each meeting with Casey. His joy, creativity and exuberance are infectious. Everybody worked closely together, on the same page at every moment, and had a great time doing it.”
Something Rotten! utilizes many set pieces — including the Bottom house that opens up for interior scenes, the platform with medieval lanterns for the Bard’s big “Shakespeare In The Park” number, Soothsayer Alley, and the space for the Bottom’s theater company — along with 17 painted drops. Both The “Shakespeare In the Park” and the finale sequence each require three drops alone.
“There are two tree portals that fly in,” explains Pask. “They frame a backdrop that has a little castle that’s a Tudor interpretation of the one in Central Park viewed from the Delacorte Theater. [Throughout the show] the Tudor town slides around, so you’re creating different pictures with these Tudor London panels. Soothsayer Alley is a major location [in] the first 20 minutes of the show when we start to do ‘A Musical’. The entire dark alley made up of two sets of sliding legs and bridges, and an upstage backdrop, is flown in and then all drifts open to transform into the stage wide into the Art Deco, Busby Berkeley-ish stage picture for the number.”
Pask loves the use of traditional painted drops for the show, especially given (as noted before) the shallow stage depth of the St. James Theatre. “You’re painting on canvas drops in great dimension so that it’s flat and can be easily flown in,” he says. “It’s all painted on a flat piece of canvas with the use of false perspective to make it look like it’s got much greater depth.”
Scenic Choreography
For Pask, the most challenging aspect of working on Something Rotten! was the choreography of the scenery and making sure that it was flexible enough for numbers that required changes. “Casey is a dancer by foundation and such a brilliant choreographer,” declares Pask, “and this show is an exceptional example of how transitions work when they’re really, deeply considered on the page before you walk into the theater, [working] with a brilliant stage manager and collaborating with a fantastic production manager all plotting everything out [with the different departments]. Casey was leading the charge for how we wanted the transitions to work. These transitions are as important as some of the scenes so that there’s a constant fluidity in maintaining the energy of the show. They’re not just doing a scene, stopping, then changing the set, and doing a scene and then changing the set. There is so much art in the transitions — that’s where I think musical theater comes together at its best, when there is a real understanding of that kind of movement in a show.”
The designer feels that the look of Something Rotten! reflects the tone of the music, book, and humor, and that it has a contemporary approach as well. “It doesn’t feel old-fashioned to me because it’s not old-fashioned in the way that it moves,” says Pask. “It is very fluid and sophisticated in the way that it is constantly shifting and transforming. Jeff Croiter’s lighting is brilliant, and I just bow down to [costume designer] Gregg Barnes’ amazing talents and the 500 amazing decisions on each garment in this show that he has made. Each costume makes my jaw drop.”
Beyond Timber
There is a lot of aluminum and steel in the framing of set pieces like Soothsayer Alley to keep them from bowing. “Timber is something that doesn’t have a great span or a lot of integrity over long distances and lengths,” explains Pask. “There are aspects [of the set] that are timber, but it’s more like timber sheathing as opposed to timber framing. The timber framing is relegated to things like the platforms for Shakespeare in the Park. They are then sculpted and painted. There’s a lot of heavy sculpting and scenic artwork on this show. To me, this is a love letter to the scenic arts. And each shop that worked on this did the most amazing job.”
There are many palettes and extensive automation used in the show, other than the door and table that are manually moved at the start of Act II. “Most everything is automated — all the benches that come on for the gospel number in Act II, all the furniture for the house — and it’s all timed,” says Pask. “It’s done as a dance, in a way.”
Pask is very proud of Something Rotten! and believes its success stems from everyone working in close collaboration. “I’m really proud of the transitions on this,” he declares. “I feel like the transitions on this show have really been surgically considered. I think that’s clear to the audience, and I’m thrilled with how each look comes and goes, and the level of artistry in each transformation. I’ve received many wonderful compliments about that aspect of the show especially, and that’s made me really happy. It was something that was really important to us from the outset.”
