Broadway By Design: Hudson, Reiffenstuel, Austin & Cork LEOPOLDSTADT from Page to Stage

In Broadway by Design, BroadwayWorld is shining a spotlight on the stellar designs of this Broadway season, show by show. Today, we continue with the creatives from Broadway's epic, new play from Tom Stoppard, Leopoldstadt- Scenic Designer Richard Hudson, Costume Designer Brigitte Reiffenstuel, Lighting Designer Neil Austin, and Sound Designer/Original Music Adam Cork.

Set in Vienna, Leopoldstadt takes its title from the Jewish quarter. This passionate drama of love and endurance begins in the last days of 1899 and follows one extended family deep into the heart of the 20th Century. Full of his customary wit and beauty, Tom Stoppard's late work spans fifty years of time over two hours.

Where did the design process begin? Scenic Designer Richard Hudson looked to images from the time. "The inspiration for the set and prop design of this production were period photographs, both professional and amateur, sourced online, in books and libraries - the sort of snapshots one would find in a family album," he explained. "This is why the look of the show is mainly monochrome, and a mixture of real and impressionistic."

"My biggest challenge was to design stage pictures that could simply dissolve from one to another without the need for lengthy, laborious scene changes."

Lighting Designer Neil Austin then expanded upon Hudson's monochrome canvas. "My thought process was to take us from the warm and coziness of the end of the 19th century and the glory of that formality through to the cold stark reality of what happened to the community at the start of the second Wold War. I was trying top tell that story through color and through the sharpness of the dynamic- soft and light to dark and shadow-filled."

"Designing Leopoldstadt was a great opportunity to show the changing times in the 20th century with the help of the costumes," added Costume Designer Brigitte Reiffenstuel. "From 1900 to 1924, 1938 and 1955, the world the characters live through changes beyond recognition. The inspiration for the costumes were the characters Tom Stoppard created. Their strengths, vibrancy, flaws, and humanity gave a clear guideline as to what the costumes needed to be.

"1900 is a warm and safe environment that the audience wants to dive into and take part in - berry-coloured, bathed in warm lighting.

"1924 shows a rapid and progressive change towards everything modern and dynamic - bright in colour, hopeful for the future. 1938 hints of imminent gloom and catastrophe.

"1955 is a bare environment - void of vibrant colour, the result of World War II.

"The biggest challenge was to create clothes, not costumes," she continued. "The actors needed to submerge with the character they portray. The audience should not be distracted with what a cast member wears; the cast member should inhabit their part in the play without the distraction of costumes shouting for attention."

"The set was very two-dimensional, quite deliberately," added Austin. "I was adding the three-dimensional reality onto that pictorial world. I suppose that was my biggest challenge, because with the working lights on, what you're looking at is a black box. Lighting adds all of the storytelling elements to that- time, location, emotion, atmosphere... all of those dull things that we do [Laughs]. It was a lovely blank canvas for me to play with."

Just as much thought went into the show's Sound Design and Original Music, which was helmed by Adam Cork. "The play begins at Christmastime in 1899 Vienna, and questions of assimilation and identity are in the air from the outset," he explained. "Prosperous Hermann extols the virtues of fitting in, despite not being accepted everywhere in society due to his Jewish family background. That sense of being lost, perpetually in transit, never quite at home, also feeds into the musical language which carries us through the scenes in the 1899/1900 act. Carving out a music and sound design language for 1899/1900 was just the first challenge, as 'Leopoldstadt' is like four plays in one evening. There's also the excitement of collaborating with other departments to ensure our individual efforts all work well together.

"We move from 1900 to 1924 with a video sequence - silent film footage from the period, to which I add a soundtrack of voices and effects 'as if' captured at the time, together with energetic Klezmer, which I have treated as if it's moving from rich 'reality' to crude 'reproduction' in the early era of commercial recording technology.

"For the transition, to 1938, the history itself is hugely suggestive for sound design. Stoppard asks for 'bombers' to begin with, referencing the first moments of Hitler's annexation of Austria. This was the starting point for me to construct a sound montage representing the overwhelming power and unity of the Nazi military machine on the one hand, and the frightening chaos erupting into the life of our protagonist-family on the other.

"The play moves into 1955 and a post-war modernity many of us recognise (still) as being of 'our' era - an international space whose order depends substantially upon a collusion to ignore parts of history. Behind the period sounds I've added distant, modern traffic to support this feeling.

"As this scene (and the play) draws towards its conclusion we return in memory to 1899 and finally again to the 'Leopoldstadt Waltz' - a nostalgic longing for lost comfort, lost potential, lost family, lost tribe, but also the unassimilated element which re-construes itself and its surroundings to create a new fusion, its own style, underlining the point that identity is crucial, but sameness allows for no change."

Leopoldstadt is currently running on Broadway at the Longacre Theatre.

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