May 1 2022 Load-In Starts Today

[scenicdesign71]

Arg.  My optimism about Much Ado has taken some not-altogether-surprising, but still distressing, hits since last I posted here.

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Model of current best-case scenario.                                                                                                                             Original design.

No roofs on the Main House or the little downstage-left Shed.  No cornices on anything, just a narrow 5" band across the top of the Main House to help it seem at least nominally less unfinished.  The takeaway is that, despite my own early fears that these elements might be a bridge too far for this company's schedule and/or budget, I just couldn't envision the design in any really satisfactory form without them.  Partly out of eagerness to mitigate those fears (with sporadic success), the folks in Florida overestimated how much they could accomplish with the available resources; in the end, they simply ran out of time.  So it was a perfect storm of overambition (however uneasy) on my part  and overconfidence (however well-intended) on theirs.

Judging by the shop photos I've seen, the rest of the set will probably look lovely; but the loss of these two key pieces -- roofs and cornices -- is unfortunate, to put it gently.  (I might even venture so far as to call them the design's two most prominent and effective signifiers of time and place, with the [thankfully remaining] frescoes, arcade and watchtower competing for a close-but-not-that-close third place).

The TL/DR version:

These are clean-enough cuts in theory, and they don't affect the actors or their staging in any way; hence "not altogether surprising," since, as cosmetic decoration in that sense, there was always the worry in the back of my mind that these two big, heavy, complex and labor-intensive elements could become tempting last-minute sacrifices.  Indeed, I've been vocal about that worry from the beginning precisely because their loss would (and does) seriously damage the look of the design -- specifically, of the Main House which is its visual and conceptual focus.  (The Shed looks kinda silly as a roofless little wood-and-stone cube, too; but it's less important and, earth-toned and relatively recessive over there on the periphery, less in-your-face than the squat, blocky, roofless Main House).

It's true that these elements can be cut cleanly enough to at least not look as though the crew ran out of time and stopped building, so to speak, mid-hammer-swing, with areas of framing still un-skinned and patches of unpainted plywood still showing.  (I probably shouldn't jinx today's load-in by even imagining that scenario).  But it's also true that, from an overall design perspective, the lack of a roof or cornice on the Main House -- however clean their absence is made to look -- leaves the building awkwardly truncated and architecturally incomplete in a big, not-subtle way.  (Consider what the change implies about the interior ceilings: never very high to begin with, if you stopped to think about it, they must now be exceedingly cramped even by the standards of a modern basement apartment, let alone the 16th-century villa of the Governor of Messina).  In a sense, it's almost worse if the cleanness of the excision actually makes it seem like a deliberate, if aesthetically ill-judged and graceless, design choice on my part.

It's a pity, because the rest of the set is skillfully constructed and beautifully painted and looks very nice indeed, from what I've seen.  Certainly everyone down there has been working their butts off to make this show happen, and, barring any further disasters, I might yet be able to salvage a few good portfolio photos, albeit only close-up details or medium shots carefully cropped to circumvent the missing elements.  (Sneaky? I prefer to think of it, just this once, as... tactful).  The company has been unfailingly friendly and generous; they've insisted that, even roofless, this set will delight their audiences and represent a new high-water mark for the company; and this project has in many ways been a stimulating and rewarding one for me.  (As a friend assured me yesterday, by way of consolation: if nothing else, I have a really nifty 3D model to show for it).

Keep your fingers crossed until later this week when I start seeing pics of the finished set onsite, fully assembled for the first time.  I feel like any hope for its success -- even as defined by less exacting standards than mine -- is kinda hanging by a thread at this point, so any significant further cuts would be frankly devastating.  But that's not to say they couldn't happen.