How to Create “Nightclub Nirvana” on Broadway

Derek McLane knows how to create ambiance. He’s tackled designs for the stage—Moulin Rouge, Merrily We Roll Along, Anything Goes—and for major events, like multiple Academy Awards and the past three Met Galas, including this year’s daffodil-laden extravaganza. Now, he’s behind the sets for two new Broadway musicals—Just In Time and Death Becomes Her—and earned Tony nominations for both.

Both shows are based, at least in part, on existing material. Just In Time traces the life of Bobby Darin, played by Jonathan Groff, as he builds a music career with songs like “Beyond the Sea” and “Mack the Knife.” The musical, set (almost) in the round at Circle in the Square, takes the audience to the Copacabana nightclub, Portofino on Italy’s Amalfi Coast, and inside the dressing rooms at the Ed Sullivan Show. Meanwhile, Death Becomes Her, based on the 1992 movie by the same name, is far more exaggerated, with massive, moving sets, special effects, and scenes that bridge reality and the supernatural. But each reinterprets their inspirations both for Broadway and new audiences.

In honor of tonight’s Tony Awards, where McLane has dual nominations in the Scenic Design of a Musical category, we spoke with the set designer about the process behind bringing these two shows to life.

Which musical did you start working on first?

I started working on Death Becomes Her first, three years ago. About a year ago, we opened in Chicago, which is a really valuable step in learning about what made the show work.

The thing about Death Becomes Her is it’s really high camp. It’s the opposite of Just In Time in so many ways. It’s a completely ridiculous, over the top story. It’s about these women who get this magic potion that makes them eternally youthful, but it comes at a terrible price.

The Death Becomes Her set. Monique Carboni

How would you describe the sets in Death Becomes Her?

Elegant-creepy-gothic. Because the show is about defying death, I decided to explore the architecture of death. I based it all on gothic crypts: the subterranean rooms below cathedrals where they often bury bodies. It’s a heightened, very glamorous version of gothic architecture.

What is your favorite part of that set?

One of the first things we see in the show is Viola’s world. Viola is the magical woman who owns the potion that can make you eternal. She is this beautiful woman of indeterminate age, but she seems like she’s been around for at least 1,000 years. I wanted her space to be ancient and hot at the same time. It’s made of all of these gothic columns that, through a trick of perspective, seem like they go on for a mile on stage.

The gothic columns, both real and LED, that make up Viola’s world in Death Becomes Her. Monique Carboni

We have three layers of real columns on stage, which create quite a bit of depth, but then upstage is a drop [a vertical backdrop], but it’s actually digital. It’s on an LED screen and has a really nice photo-realistic feeling to it, so that a lot of people, when they look at it, don’t even know that it’s a drop. They just look at the stage and go, “How the hell is it so deep?”

It’s an old fashioned trick that set designers in the Renaissance used to do, but we used modern technology to make it a little bit better.

The sets in Death Becomes Her are large and varied, whereas, in Just In Time, they’re more constrained by the tightness of Circle In the Square. How did you think about creating on a smaller scale?

It requires a kind of efficiency. But the thing that made that possible is that the story starts with Jonathan Groff—it doesn’t start with Bobby Darin. He comes out and says, “Hi, I’m Jonathan Groff” and it gives us permission for a kind of storytelling that has a lot of shorthand in it. We say from the beginning that we’re not going to faithfully create all of the places that the show goes.

Jonathan and the other actors tell us where we are and we have very minimal gestures. What was great was we didn’t need that many literal things for the storytelling, and it let me concentrate on creating the nightclub. So that’s really what my job on Just in Time ended up being: trying to create that really luxe nightclub that’s not even quite real.

Just in Time’s nightclub-meets-set. Monique Carboni

The nightclub—which is supposed to be the Copacabana—is the main set for Just in Time, with some members of the audience seated at cocktail tables in the center of the theater. Tell us how you came up with that set.

“Swank” was the word I kept thinking. Bobby Darin and his nightclub world was swank. But, if you were to look up a picture of the Copacabana from the ‘50s and ‘60s, it’s pretty plain. It has papier-mâché palm trees and some drapes, but it’s a little disappointing, to be honest. But the way the Copacabana is described by Bobby Darin’s mother—it’s nightclub Nirvana. And that’s what I tried to design: not the real Copacabana, but the Copacabana of Bobby Darin’s mother’s fantasy.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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