Sweeney Todd at the Lyric Opera of Chicago
Chicago Scenic partnered with the Lyric Opera of Chicago on their new 2002-2003 production of Sweeney Todd. CSSI Project Manager Ken Zommer worked with Lyric’s Technical Director Drew Landmesser and Assistant Technical Director Tom Acker to provide scenic elements and props for the production.

Sweeney Todd Set Designer Brian Thompson is one of Australia’s most acclaimed stage designers and has designed numerous sets for film, theater, opera, dance, and musicals. His work includes the 1996 set design for The King and I, which won him a Tony Award. His work was also seen at the closing ceremony of the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney.

Traditionally set in a barber’s shop, Thompson incorporated Director Neil Armfield’s vision of the opera when he designed the set, which was a dark and eerie insane asylum. The ominous design incorporated 24-foot-tall walls that are padded along the lower part and covered with a cage-like ceiling. A giant metal cage sits within these walls center stage, creating a cage-within-a-cage effect. CSSI engineered and fabricated a huge 32-foot donut revolve to rotate cast members and props around the stage. A 20-foot-high catwalk surrounds the entire set where asylum guards and spotlight operators can observe patients. CSSI Job Leads Ken Glucksberg and Dave Duwell supervised the construction of the set pieces in the shop.

Other scenic elements included traveling drapes and a dramatic nine-foot-tall cage, which rides on one of the Lyrics’s own lifts, center stage. The infamous barber’s chair is placed on top of this cage, and when the lift is fully raised, the demon barber’s victims’ bodies can be seen as they slide down into the bowels of the Lyric stage. The lift platform also has two lower visible compartments where the insane barber stashes more dead bodies.

The custom built props included a bottle cart, which telescoped up from eight to 32 inches, a pie oven large enough to hold a human body, birdcages, and a meat grinder that extruded “ground meat.”

The show will run at the Lyric through late December and will then be remounted at the Royal Opera House in London.

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