Dane Laffrey (‘A Christmas Carol’ scenic designer) on the mysteries of his ‘shapeshifter’ set: ‘We want the space to be unreliable’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
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When Jefferson Mays wanted to perform a solo version of “A Christmas Carol,” scenic designer Dane Laffrey knew right away that it wasn’t going to be a simplistic approach with an actor and a stool. When he and director Michael Arden pitched their approach, Laffrey told the actor: “We’re pretty interested in turning this into a real ghost story, a real phantasmagoria. Where there’s a really substantial physical production around you.” Mays was instantly on board. Laffrey then created a set which focused on the power and mystery of the unseen, and earned a Tony nomination for his efforts. Watch the exclusive video interview above.
Laffrey’s puzzle box of a set contains around 30 automated effects, which aide in the many surprise scenic transitions in the piece. This includes walls which slide in and out of place, turntables, deck tracks, flown set pieces. “It’s a shapeshifter,” he explains. But, the audience rarely sees the space change shape with most of the transitions occurring in the darkness. “You really can’t tell what’s happening,” says Laffery of the tightly choreographed dance his set performs. “You’re just in this mercurial space, and then a place kind of just crystallizes,” he explains, “unlike a lot of shows that want to show you the machine, we don’t want to show you the machine.”
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The designer’s refusal to show his hand mirrors the state of mind of the central character. “We want the space to be unreliable,” notes Laffrey, just as Scrooge himself is an unreliable narrator during his night of hauntings. “Scrooge is on very unsteady ground,” he explains, “he does not know what’s coming next.” Neither does the audience.
Perhaps the only exception to this rule of hidden magic tricks, is the extravagant banquet scene which lowers from the ceiling when the Ghost of Christmas Present appears. A lavishly long dinner table topped with an abundant feast, where nearly every item appears to be dipped in glittering gold. Laffrey felt the need to “differentiate” his design for that particular ghost. “Though it takes a dark turn at the end…it begins with him as this Dionysian figure,” he notes. Besides simply giving the audience, and Scrooge, something to “marvel at,” the feast feels warm and inviting, and taps into the Christmas-time memories that viewers will bring to the play. “You have to acknowledge with ‘A Christmas Carol,’ that almost every person has seen it before,” explains Laffrey. So introducing “this three dimensional explosion of bounty, and joy, and Christmas, felt really important to visualize.”
WATCH Michael Arden interview: ‘Parade’ director
Laffrey shares his Tony nomination with projection designer Lucy Mackinnon, who helped transform the sets through intense, yet subtle, projection mapping. “We tried so hard to make them indistinguishable from each other,” says Laffrey of their two mediums. He elaborates that the goal was to “integrate our work so intensely that you really didn’t read it as a digital element.” Indeed, many audiences may not have realized that the sets were augmented with video effects to help tell the story. At least, not until “painterly” moments such as the wallpaper slowly decaying around Scrooge.
“A Christmas Carol” was the first of two collaborations this season with Michael Arden, as the longtime friends also teamed up for the current revival of “Parade.” That musical’s design couldn’t be further from the aesthetic in “A Christmas Carol,” as “Parade” is all about “eliminating artfice” as opposed to the illusions in Charles Dickens’ ghost story. “My collaborations with Michael…are different because we have such a depth of shared vocabulary,” notes Laffrey of the pair’s longstanding creative partnership. “It really feels like we are building a shared body of work that is in inevitably in conversation with itself”
“A Christmas Carol” marks Laffrey’s second Tony nomination. He was previously nominated for the revival of “Once on This Island.”
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