Cloud-capp’d Towers and Gorgeous Palaces

Designing Broadway: How Derek McLane and Other Acclaimed Set Designers Create the Visual World of TheatreBy Derek McLane and Elia MellRunning Press Adult. 272 pages.If you’ve seen more than a couple of Broadway shows over the past quarter century, chances are you’ve beheld a set crafted by Derek McLane. Since 1994, Mr. McLane has designed scenery for 45 productions in the theater district, where he’s currently represented by three high-profile musicals: the Michael Jackson homage “MJ The Musical” and the film adaptations “Almost Famous” and “Moulin Rouge! The Musical.”The last show, which earned Mr. McLane his second Tony Award, was among several that convinced the author Eila Mell that his work should be celebrated in a book. “I’d written a lot about fashion design,” says Ms. Mell—her credits include “Project Runway: The Show That Changed Fashion”—“but theater had been my first love; I was an actor for ten years before transitioning into writing. So I contacted Derek, and said, what do you think?”The result is “Designing Broadway: How Derek McLane and Other Acclaimed Set Designers Create the Visual World of Theatre.” As the title indicates, the book documents not only his work — which includes off-Broadway and regional stagings (as well as television specials and concerts) — but that of other accomplished artists. Ms. Mell interviewed a number of them, as well as Mr. McLane, and also spoke with directors, writers, actors, and other designers involved with the featured productions. The two then co-authored the book, with Mr. McLane’s additional commentary providing personal and historical context. “Designing Broadway” is divided into four parts, prefaced by Mr. McLane’s introduction and a foreword by the actor-director Ethan Hawke. The first, “The Classics,” spotlights designers who inspired Mr. McLane — among them Ming Cho Lee, his teacher at the Yale School of Drama; Michael Yeargan, another of Yale’s faculty; and Robin Wagner, whom Mr. McLane worked for early in his career.Accumulating photos, particularly for this section, “was a massive job,” Mr. McLane says. “There were some that we could see online, but we couldn’t figure out how to get the rights. There were a few cases where we just gave up, and I put in sketches.” He drew a few himself — for the original productions of “Guys and Dolls” and “Follies,” and a 1967 staging of the opera “Tristan und Isolde” — and acquired others from the designers.Part Two, which constitutes most of the book, traces nearly 80 productions, dividing them into sub-sections such as “Transforming A Theater,” “Furious Scene Changes,” and “Audience as Scenery.” “The categories are hardly precise,” Mr. McLane allows. “A lot of the shows could have been switched from one to another. One thing I thought would be interesting was trying to find a way to show how different designers approach similar problems, or similar genres — for example, with a big American musical, or with plays that are very realistic or have a lot of scene changes. Every play has different demands.”Another section focuses on a filmed version of “Waiting for Godot” that Mr. McLane worked on during the Covid shutdown — “We wanted to talk about the pandemic,” Ms. Mell notes — and one is devoted entirely to “Moulin Rouge.” “Eila and I talked about that quite a bit, and I think in my career, it’s the show that has gotten the most attention,” Mr. McLane explains. “And because it’s such a big show, and so eclectic — it has a lot of different styles within one design — I felt like I was able to draw on a bunch of different skills that I had developed over the years.”Ms. Mell had been struck by the difference between Mr. McLane’s sets for “Moulin Rouge” and a far more intimate production she saw off-Broadway a few years back, of David Rabe’s “Good For Otto,” also featured in the book. “It was so interesting to me that one designer would be flexible and talented enough to do both,” she says. “People have asked me many times what my style is as a designer,” Mr. McLane notes. “I say, ‘That’s for you to say.’ I really try, to the best of my ability, to discover a style that comes out of the story and the particular project.”Mr. McLane isn’t bothered by critics, or audience members, who undervalue his contributions and those of his peers. “I think some writers are very sophisticated about design, and others don’t see it as much and are more focused on the playwriting and acting — and that’s fine. Design is important, but it isn’t the most important thing in theater. And because it’s such an obscure profession, a lot of people don’t really understand it.”For those people, Mr. McLane hopes that “Designing Broadway” will shed light on “the sheer number of choices that get made for every production. Hopefully this book is for anybody who loves theater, and it can give some insight into the greater conversations that go into making it.”

Cloud-capp’d Towers and Gorgeous Palaces

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