The scenery from the 5th Avenue Theatre’s 2012 production of Elf is making a return engagement this Christmas season at Houston’s Theatre Under the Stars. “Matthew Smucker's set design is a glittering eye-full, gliding off and on like a dream” writes D.L. Groover in the Houston Press. Tickets and details about the TUTS production are available here.
Rock of Ages now open at the 5th Avenue
Broadway sensation Rock of Ages is now open with a new physical production at Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre, with Starship’s Mickey Thomas and Seattle’s own Pickwick frontman Galen Dissten starring, along with a cast of local favorites. The show runs through February 24, with tickets available here. “Great casting all around. The whole ensemble truly rocks.” writes Seattle Pockets, “So does the lighting and set (the set has some fantastic built-in surprises, wait for it!). And the costumes and wigs deserve their own applause.”
Photos by Tracy Martin and Mark Kitaoka
Man of La Mancha sizzles at the 5th Avenue
"This “La Mancha” places its outer story, ie “Cervantes in prison relaying the tale of Don Quixote” into a modern 21st century setting instead of its usual 17th century one. The show opens on one huge unit set, a terrifyingly modern and brutal looking prison populated by 21st century characters. Framing the story in this modern context certainly opens up the material to fresher contemplation as well as giving the design team something fresh to deal with. And, this modernistic take on “La Mancha” certainly offers up interesting parallels to events happening in the world today. It’s no accident that this prison might just recall the feeling/look of more contemporary institutions like Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib.
From a design perspective this Man of La Mancha is pretty stunning with superior work from scenic designer Matthew Smucker, costume designer Harmony Arnold, lighting designer L.B. Morse and sound designer Christopher Walker. This show looks and sounds exceptional… Hurrah for that!" - Seattle Gay Scene
"Director Allison Narver sets her Man of La Mancha in what looks like a contemporary black site crossed with a dungeon. A stories-high chain-link fence topped with razor wire reaches up to the rafters, recalling maximum-security prisons. Tall slabs of cement resembling the West Bank barrier form a wall across the stage. There's also medieval-looking, solitary jail cells the inmates wheel around, and every so often a guard disappears one of the prisoners. Scene designer Matthew Smucker's postmodern incarceration hodgepodge suggests that storytelling might transport you outside prison walls, but it's not enough to knock them down. That is, the prisoners in this show may find some comfort in Cervantes's yarn—and that comfort is real and valuable and necessary and worthy as an act of survival—but the words bounce off the dungeon's walls." - The Stranger
"The work is not, and does not pretend to be, a faithful rendition of either Cervantes’ life or of Don Quixote. Ironically, director Allison Narver’s nuanced, textually faithful, but scenically re-conceived version isn’t your Mama’s La Mancha as seen on Broadway, nor thankfully is it a ruinous, 1972 version with Peter O’Toole and Sophia Loren. It is however a production that doesn’t let its redone appearance (a bold Matthew Smucker designed neo-Nazi type concentration camp in a time/location unnamed) upstage a script and score that still ranks as one of the best of its era." - Jetspace Magazine
"And it just looks really, amazingly cool." - Madison Park Times
Elf goes East for the Holidays
My scenic design for the 5th Avenue Theatre's 2012 Seattle production of the musical ELF has been working its way across the country, one holiday season at a time. In 2013, the set appeared at Houston's Theatre Under the Stars, and this year the show re-opens with its original director, Eric Ankrim, at New Jersey's Paper Mill Playhouse. You can click here to see the lovely spread of production photos at Broadwayworld.com as well as clicking here to purchase tickets and to get further info about the production from the Paper Mill.
(Follow up edit: It is always satisfying to see your name in a New York Times review... )
