By Edward Karam
11 Jun 2011
A Royal Entrance
Joanna Lumley in La Bête photo by Joan Marcus
Massive set pieces and aerial derring-do weren't the only striking visuals. In La Bête, Joanna Lumley's entrance as the Princess was accompanied by a tornado of wind and gold Mylar. The effect wasn't seen in the London production, says director Matthew Warchus, but he devised it for Broadway because here the show played without an intermission.
"I thought I could improve it if I could emphasize the different 'chapters' of the piece," says Warchus. "I identified five major chapters or 'acts' in the journey of the play and set about giving each new chapter a strong start so that there would be an injection of energy and we would feel a clear temperature change in the story, like a new weather system blowing in.
"I imagined the arrival of the Princess, her unassailable power and force, as being like a tornado blowing into the room and causing chaos," he explains. "I drew a sketch on the back of an envelope of her entering in a horizontal blast of wind, which would almost cover the whole width of the stage, and asked for this blast of wind to be gold and sparkling (like her costume) like a glitter tornado." The actual effect was sourced to technical supervisor Gene O'Donovan, adds lighting designer Hugh Vanstone, and was created by using "a custom-made, large directional electric fan and glitter, with extremely bright golden side light."
Vanstone's lighting was a bravura moment. But puppeteer Basil Twist used lighting not to call attention to anything, but to hide the effects he created for The Pee-wee Herman Show, particularly when Pee-wee's dream of flying comes true. Long before Pee-wee's 1980s TV show, Paul Reubens had played the character for the Groundlings, a comedy club act in Los Angeles. Back then, it was a low-tech, charming moment. "There was a puppet face and a puppet body," says Twist. "He would just stand there, and the audience would get the idea."
For the production at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre, Twist needed to upgrade the flying effect, but Reubens balked at being lifted by wires. "They actually tried that, and he hated it," says Twist. Instead, he suggested using a crane to move the star. "We found a small one that raised him about nine feet in the air," says Twist. "Then we completely covered that crane and everything we didn't want seen with black velvet." The lighting was crucial to pull it off, however.
Reubens wore a backpack that had the puppet body of the character extending behind it. Using a combination of ultraviolet light and special paint, Twist hid the operational elements from the naked eye. "That black-light effect renders everything else invisible," he says. "Otherwise, you would perceive that stuff on stage. His face needed to be isolated, and the light doesn't hit other things on stage."
To further the effect and illuminate Pee-wee's face, Twist employed a different style of lighting, on poles that extended in front of Reubens. "They were little pin spots that lit just his face," says Twist. "That way he could turn left or right, but those little pin spots would always stay on his face and wouldn't light up the crane." The result is that when Pee-wee first appears, one has the impression that the actor is merely standing on stage with the puppet body behind him. "But then," says Twist, "he goes up in the air. It was cool."
Twist's favorite effect was "a film idea that was transferred to stage," he says. Near the end of Pee-wee's show, a variety of big, monster-like eyes moves across a darkened stage. "They're little, battery-powered light boxes that have moving pupils and blinking eyeballs," says Twist. "Puppeteers in black were moving about in space with these little light boxes." Amid a season of complicated, risky, breathtaking effects, this one, says Twist, "was actually pretty easy."
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Edward Karam is a freelance arts writer and critic based in New York City.
This article appears in the Playbill for the 2011 Tony Awards, June 12, at the Beacon Theatre on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
