Lady Windermere's Fan images
At right you see the wall structure. The vertical lines worked nicely in catching light and pushing the broad, low stage into shape. That's assistant director Teddy viewing it in amazement.
The plan at first was to paint subtle cross-hatch texture on these units; I had the Victorian artist and writer George DuMaurier in mind. One panel turned out the way I wanted it. One. Oh well. As I said on the preceding page, lavender walls are nice too.
The playing space (in front of the jogged walls) turned out cramped, as I intended, and then cramped some more. Incidentally, these walls survived in nearly the original form (but new colors) through the next two shows, Hedwig and the Angry Inch and a fundraising musicale. What they did not survive was opening night of Windermere, when one of the appliqué fluted columns fell off with an enormous crash. Matt, playing the butler of this very high-class house, saved the scene by simply picking the piece up (muttering something about the quality of help you get these days) and striking it. I tried hard not to take his remark personally.
As we approached opening night, time just didn't permit a lot of photography, so I can't show you the columns or the faux window unit in Act 3. Andy and Matt built and rigged a valance frame that flew up into the loft when not in use; then Tina made heavy curtains, possibly of velveteen. Until opening weekend (see preceding paragraph), this proved the most troublesome piece of the set. We cut the frame down to lighten it, rigged and rerigged the fly-out, drilled and redrilled the crew, and took out riders on the insurance of the two actors who had to hide under it. But this beast of an effect worked flawlessly.
Some of the color differences in the pix are not in the paint but result from our mix of daylight and Gro-Light tubes in the worklight fixtures.
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