For this Harlem ballroom-inspired take on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats, set designer Rachel Hauck did a deep dive. Her research included balls at the Elks Lodge on W. 129th St. in New York City, featured in the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning.

Hauck, who won a Tony for her Hadestown set, was guided by co-directors Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch’s grounding philosophy. “It’s not a show about a ball,” said Hauck. “It is a ball.”

“Foremost on all of our minds,” she added, “was coming up with a space that breaks down the formality of a traditional audience relationship to a Broadway stage.”

Hauck’s key elements include a dynamic runway where the cast poses, prowls, and dances in front of an onstage audience integrated into the performance. You'll also spot eye-catching features like a glitter tile floor and warehouse windows. Hauck’s work incorporates a tinsel curtain for flash and projections for ballroom category titles (like “Pretty Boy Realness”).

The set also includes a wondrous staircase that towers a couple stories tall and arrives late in the show, just in time for the iconic song “Memory.” “It took us a minute before we landed on that,” said Hauck, adding that she “lost just one" of her lives executing the design feat.

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Scott Pask, a Tony winner for The Pillowman, The Coast of Utopia, and The Book of Mormon, has designed sets for over 60 shows. His latest, Schmigadoon!, follows a New York couple who stumble into a magical town that operates like a Golden Age musical.

Meticulously hand-painted backdrops and ingeniously crafted forced-perspective set pieces — including shoppes and a gazebo that ooze old-timey charm — are main elements in Pask’s work that celebrates and winks at classic shows.

“It’s like a pop-up valentine to the Golden Age of musical theatre,” he said. Necco Wafers, candies that come in a range of pastel hues, lent inspiration. “They have a certain color palette I liked,” said Pask.

A striking hand-painted forest backdrop has a fairytale-like quality. “The woods is the place where there’s some intimacy,” said Pask. “We have these quiet moments and revealing conversations.” Film buffs will recognize a bit of Citizen Kane in Schmigadoon mayoral race signage.

“For me, this show has presented so many unique challenges and so many just opportunities to explore new terrain,” said Pask.

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Tackling The Lost Boys, set designer Dane Laffrey faced a challenge to create a spectacular multi-layered, multi-level world that left room for flying vampires. Like the show’s 1987 movie source, the plot follows a mom with two teenage sons, who move to a coastal town occupied by hungry bloodsuckers.

“I hadn’t seen the movie before we started working on the musical,” said Laffrey, who won a Tony for his set for Maybe Happy Ending last year. “That was an advantage. I didn't have any images in my head for it, so I really got to encounter it first as a piece of theatre.”

On stage, the show unfolds on a three-story set, complete with a fly rig, that blends a California beach town vibe with supernatural danger. Key scenic elements depict a seaside carnival, a playground, the vampires’ lair, and the family’s home.

“Verticality was incredibly important in the design,” said Laffrey, pointing to the use of an elevator and the family house that glides up and down. “We also play a lot with signage that quickly defines a space.” That includes a neon superhero in a store in the show.

Eagle-eyed theatregoers will also note references to Peter Pan on the set, including towering streetlamps in a playground scene that read "Neverland."

Laffrey marvels at the project that’s enabled him to think very big. “From a scale perspective,” he said, “I’ve never done anything bigger or more demanding.”

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DIY was the guiding principle for dots, a three-person design collective, for director Sam Pinkleton’s revival of Richard O’Brien’s 1973 cult-favorite musical. The story revolves around Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a flamboyant and fluid scientist who welcomes two naive, unexpected guests into his mysterious mansion.

“We wanted to create a world where Frank had his hands on everything, like he made it all himself,” said Kimie Nishikawa, speaking on behalf of her collaborators Santiago Orjuela-Laverde and Andrew Moerdyk, who have collectively been up for a Tony twice before.

Frank’s lair features funky metallic fabric curtains, painted mannequins, coil silver duct work, plastic skeletons, tin foil, tinsel, 3-D printed models of Frank's castle, and a descending moon that nods, time warp-style, to Studio 54’s history as a decadent disco. It’s all meant to look a little ratty, but it’s all carefully conceived.

“The ducting was about funneling energy to Frank’s lab. The mannequins came from the idea that Frank wanted more people at his party,” said Nishikawa, “so he made his own guests.”

That party starts immediately upon entering Studio 54, which is cast in an eerie green glow. “Sam was very keen on transforming the whole theatre. As soon as you walk in, it has to feel different. It had to give freedom to people to be themselves.”

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Personal baggage takes on dramatic dimensions in Soutra Gilmour’s set for this new Broadway musical. The story follows eager Brit Dougal as he comes to NYC for his father’s wedding and, over the course of a chaotic few days, unexpectedly bonds with Robin, the bride’s complicated sister.

“When I was a kid, my Northern Irish grandmother had a suitcase under her bed in which she basically kept all the family photographs,” said Gilmour. “When I’d go and stay, she’d pull out the suitcase, and she would show me the photographs.”

Gilmour unpacks that memory decades later on stage. She uses suitcases of varying sizes, including huge custom-made ones, to build a miniature, abstracted NYC skyline, complete with hidden handrails and other safety features. The set defines locale and symbolizes memory, family, and travel. Gilmour’s design also includes a spinning stage — with two revolving "donuts" — to boost the show’s kinetic quality.

“We wanted the luggage to feel like buildings, so we gave them a textured, concrete-colored finish,” said Gilmour. “They’re dappled over with some darker and some lighter gray for depth.”

Like Dougal and Robin, several cases open up to reveal secrets and surprises, like a minibar and a hot-pink Chinese restaurant. It’s a set stuffed with meaning.

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