You may well be among the hordes world Health Organization have seen the blockbuster movie "Shrek," the first in a series of popular DreamWorks animated films about an antisocial monster who finds love and friendship.
And peradventure you likewise read "Shrek!" the whimsical storybook by the inimitable cartoonist and author William Steig, which the picture show was based on.
But Shrek's fairy-tale world is organism retooled and transformed one time again, this time into a fully grown Broadway musical.
The well-hyped production begins previews for its world-premiere run at Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre on Thursday, and it moves on to the Great White Way in November. And theatrical designer Tim Hatley promises that, dissimilar some extravaganzas in the long parade of alive movie-musical knockoffs aimed at Broadway, DreamWorks Theatricals' live "Shrek" will not be a submissive replica of its celluloid ancestor.
"Theater is a identical distinct thing," stresses the lanky, gregarious Brit, world Health Organization is in Seattle working exhaustively on the musical. "It happens live, in front of an audience, in a finite space. My job is to reinvent the 'Shrek' history for the theater � not to copy the film."
Big ol' Broadway eyeglasses take a long time to pull together, and Hatley has been labouring for 2 years on devising costumes and sets for "Shrek." He swears that to stay on track with his own ideas, "I haven't regular gone back to look on the motion-picture show in the last sestet months."
But he and his collaborators ar not reconstituting "Shrek" from whole cloth, so to speak. The lead fictional character is still the swelled, bald, green guy (played here by Tony Award nominee Brian D'Arcy James) with sticking out, tubular ears.
And he's the same fussy swamp puppet who falls for a princess, and pals up � reluctantly at first � with a smart-mouthed but loyal donkey.
Retooling a big-screen hit
If you're inquisitive whether Broadway really of necessity another radio set culled from another make animated G-rated flick, you're not alone.
But as a movie and book, "Shrek" exerted astonishingly wide invoke among adults and children. And, contends Caro Newling of Neal Street Productions (DreamWorks' theatrical co-producer), the live show aims to bridge the gap betwixt faithful court and saucy, new composition � while further "illuminating" the beloved characters via music.
The musical has a hot lester Willis Young theater music director (Jason Moore, of "Avenue Q"), a new script more faithful to Steig (written by playwright David Lindsay-Abaire) and a xII original songs composed in a variety of styles by Jeanine Tesori ("Caroline, or Change"). Meanwhile, Hatley's trans-Atlantic squad of artisans has concocted hundreds of new costumes and scenic elements.
Hatley has been gloomy this screen-to-stage road ahead. Topping a design r�sum� that includes operas, movies ("Closer," "Notes on a Scandal") and plays in London and New York (he won a Tony for design a revival meeting of Noel Coward's "Private Lives"), he contributed right to the Broadway smash "Spamalot," based on the film comedy "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."
His eye-popping howler of cutout landscapes, pissed sight gags and gloriously fake Middle Ages geared wheel helped typeset the zany tone of "Spamalot," which came to Seattle's Paramount Theatre final year.
It was also an effective audition for the role of "Shrek" room decorator, notes Newling. "We cherished someone from the set-and-costumes school, world Health Organization could give us the whole picture. Tim is a very creative homo who does both things brilliantly."
Hatley calls the sophisticated computer life in the "Shrek" films "gorgeous, but it's non theatrical." It was his charge to envision the same characters being played credibly by live actors, who take the air, talk, peach and dance in real time.
The retooling included Shrek himself. "He needs to be lovable, human, agile," suggested Hatley. "It's a big terrain he has to cover onstage, and it wouldn't work if we made him super-big, with the actor wear stilts."
Instead, he and his team crafted a "film-quality prosthetic device" � a head mask that transforms James into the ogre.
For Donkey (played by Chester Gregory II), a full-body costume was in order. It lets the role player "go down on all fours, or stand erect," points out Hatley. "And the fur is textile threaded with venetian-blind corduroys, to make it swing and go, giving it more life."
For Princess Fiona (Sutton Foster, a co-star of Broadway's "Young Frankenstein," which had its pre-Broadway premiere in Seattle), Hatley retooled the film's casual green dress (made in different sizes to accommodate the lady's quick-changing girth) and a wedding gown.
"The green dress has a beautifully detailed velvet bodice," Hatley reports. "But this is not fashion, it's theater. So it's all about textures and how it moves under the lights." (The show's lighting designer is another respected Brit, Hugh Vanstone.)
Another challenge: garb for the sawed-off rival Lord Farquaad. It has to accommodate an actor (Christopher Sieber, a "Spamalot" alum) who plays the entire part on his knees.
Not exactly a monster budget
The level of labor-intensive detail Hatley canful lavish on the "Shrek" visuals is rare, beyond the world of Broadway and opera. But spell this is an expensive venture (the producers won't specify, simply say the budget is "south" of the $20 million exhausted on "Young Frankenstein"), the designer still had to economize.
"It was fine, because I care simplicity and I hail from a philosophy of creating good theater that doesn't let to toll gazillions," says Hatley, world Health Organization has worked frequently with the leading British data-based troupe Theatre Complicite, and at the esteemed, nonprofit organization Royal National Theatre.
But zilch looks bargain basement in the atomic pile of colored costume and puppet sketches for the dozens of characters in the musical, played by a draw of about two twelve performers.
Since Shrek's turf is "invaded" by exiled song and dance figures, Hatley also created fanciful togs for a Peter Pan; a Pinocchio; a gelt plum sprite (with a tutu of sparkly blue leaves); iII blind mice ("they're a bit 'Dreamgirls,' in evening gowns"); and a classic, pointy-nosed wicked witch.
As for the scene (built, part by piece, by artisans in London, Seattle and New York), it includes an flowery, 16-foot mirror; a enceinte tree decorated with fluorescent spiders; and a giant, fierce and flirtatious dragon.
The latter is a creature (constructed from carbon-fiber basketball covered with a semitransparent pink material) that can buoy belch smoking. And it takes trine actors lurking inside to manipulate her.
Overall, praises Newling, "Tim has come up with a fluency of stage spoken communication that isn't just about bringing a lot of set pieces on and off. The design truly morphs, it moves. It is truly light on its feet."
But the London-based Hatley says he has another agenda, too. "My main goal as a designer is always to support the story and the actors," he emphasizes. "For me, the level of 'Shrek' is simple, but it has a lot of meaning and a bunch of marrow. What I do has to be part of that."
Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com
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