Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1991 - 41

white milk botrle aimed at an enormous
white bust of Beethoven.
Theatre went into the garbage can
again with Too CLever By Half, an Ostrovsky play designed by Richard Hudson in
June 1988 at the Old Vic in London. One
shiny new trash can contained phorographs and rolls of drafting. A second
can, similarly pristine, contained the
model, lying on its back, so that I had ro
peer over the edge of the can ro view it.
The wide false proscenium; which was a
realized elemenr of the design, was covered with a Soviet newspaper (Ostrovsky
is a Russian playwright). The color of the
entire set was yellow ocher. The set was
extraordinarily deep, with walls, ceiling
and floor in sharply forced perspective; at
the back, it looked like the designer had
splashed a gigantic can of black paint.
Along the stage left wall was a single row
of simple chairs. Probably the most
remarkable feature of the set was the
skewed angles-nothing was parallel ro
the floor of the theatre. The entire stage
floor was steeply raked from stage right
down to stage left, which caused the
actors in performance ro stand on a severe
angle. Anyone who saw Hudson's Tonynominated design for La Bete will appreciate the vitality and theatricality of Hudson's designs. As Hudson's designs are

prisune and elegant, so toO are the
garbage cans inro which he jerrisons his
work.
Pamela Howard's ai-parr exhibit
(enormous model, rendering and large
figure from rhe actual producrion) was her
designs for john Browns Body\ a new play
by John McGrath which has nothing ro
do with rhe American work based on
Stephen Vincent Benet's poem. Howard
worked with rhe playwright, developing
rhe script in relarion ro her visualizations.
Howard and McGrarh subsequenrly codirected the producrion ar the Tramway
Theatre in Glasgow in February 1990.
The ti rle refers to the name of the defunct
John Brown Shipyards in Glasgow. Therefore, the "body" is a metaphor for the
dead shipyards. This is a very political
play and deals with consumerism. It is
epic in scale, spanning 1760 ro 1919 and
the acrion is set in numerous locales. The
site for this production, the Tramway
Theatre in Glasgow, was used previously
for Peter Brook's production of The
Ma!Jabharata. The building, which was
not built as a theatre, had been completely
guned and was empty. The first task for
Howard then was ro lay the floor. Since
the building was an empty red brick shell,
Howard had the opportunity to define the
audience/acting areas. She placed the act-

ing areas against all four walls and
installed a central platform and four additional mobile stages. This is somewhat
reminiscent of Ronconi's design for his
Orlando Furioso. The audience of 600
moved throughout the space in small
groups in what the British call a "Promenade Performance."
Howard's design expressed the idea
that consumerism is like a carnival which
takes your money and gives you litrle in
return but diverting lights that flash and
wheels that spin. The set for john Browns
Body was a giant roller coaster surrounding the audience and a giant carnival
wheel at one end of the immense hall and
a recrearion of the set for Mayakovsky's
The Bathhouse at the other. The carnival
wheel lit up at the end of the performance
and green ligh ts chased along the edge of
the roller coaster platform. In front of the
carnival wheel was a larger-than-life-sized
figure of a woman in a ragged white gown
with oversized blue hands cradling three
gaunt white heads. This large figure represented the Mother and illustrated what
happens when you cannot pay the rent,
when you get thrown out (like garbage))
and when yOlI must work to feed your
children until your hands turn blue.
Howard's homage to Vladimir Mayakovsky at the opposite end of the hall-

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1991

FALL

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1991