![]() “I wanted to create this velvet-lined cocoon feeling, like you’re inside a Fabergé egg. No matter where you sit in the theater, you are likely to be mere inches away from any number of the actors for the better part of the show hearing their voice directly in front of you as opposed to through an amplified AV system is one of this set design’s many ingenious inventions.įor example, it would also be hard to imagine Lien’s set design without the use of more than 20,000 Swarovski crystal beads on some 31 gold starburst chandeliers throughout the house, a direct reference to the ones hanging in the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center. Great Comet is a 360-degree immersive experience. Winding platforms snake through the house, and two staircases swirl up from the main floor to the mezzanine, delivering actors where they need to go. It’s more of an environment.” Audience members are seated not only in the traditional orchestra seats and on the mezzanine, but also at tables and chairs placed on the stage, and on massive red leather banquettes built into the back of the stage facing outward toward the orchestra. “There’s no backdrop, no representation of location. ![]() “I wouldn’t even call it a set,” said Lien. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Great Comet’s set is that it hardly feels like a set at all, and there isn’t really even a stage to speak of. It’s surely not your typical Imperial Russian ensemble, but we’ll take it.)Ĭostume designer Paloma Young looked to Westwood, Gaultier, Galliano, as well as punk from the ’80s and ’90s, for inspiration. But as we go outward through those “celestial rings” into secondary and tertiary characters, the influence leans more toward a mix of “Russian peasants, but via punk rock in the ’80s and ’90s.” (For example, during a pivotal rave scene in Act I, one male chorus member wears little more than a neon green bikini with a leather harness over it. The lines are a little cleaner and there’s this mid-century vibe.” The main characters, especially the women like Natasha and society type Helene, are dressed in rich silks and lots of beading. “We have our principal characters in the center, which are maybe 85 percent period. “We have celestial rings of period trueness,” she said. The solution, Paloma told, was to use historical costume as a way to identify who is who. Great Comet has an unusually large ensemble cast, so the challenge was not only to organize them for clarity of plot, but to also develop a visual language that was unique to the show. But first, the clothes! Tony Award–winning designer Paloma Young, whose credits include Peter and the Starcatcher and The Patron Saint of Sea Monsters, is the mastermind behind this complex feat of costuming.
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