The best & worst theatre sets

Added to Maria Bjornson's fabulous Phantom set should be her Aspects set at the Prince of Wales. That was stunning, especially when the back wall split and became the mountains. She also worked wonders on Follies at the Shaftesbury. A huge loss to the theatre...

Suprised Les Mis hasn't been mentioned yet. (It did used to be better in grey...) What John Napier came up with, effectively two piles of junk on a revolve, always used to draw gasps from the audience when they joined to become the barricade. His Cats at the New London was pretty revolutionary too in its day. The original Starlight set was phenomenal, and his Sun-set was quite breathtaking.

Another vote for Mary Poppins from me. Stunning.

Best set in The Olivier, a difficult space, was for The Rivals (Peter Wood/Michael Horden). Half of The Royal Crescent in Bath looping round the back of the stage. Perfect. John Gunter design I think

I have great memories of this one from Present Laughter at Boston's Huntington Theatre in May 2007.

The musical 'Time' at the Dominion in the 80's. It was about a rock star who had to defend the earths existance against a time lord.... The whole stage floor rose up and tilted 180 degrees, they had these floating hydraulic chairs that floated all over the stag. How they did it i dont know, huge hyfraulic legs that came down and more speakers than a concert at wembley stadium, and a massive hologram of Laurence Olivier.

It was designed by John Napier, who has done so many huge set designs. I doubt we will ever see sets of that size again. Because the set got me thinking, i had to google it and found this that explains it better than i could...

"Napier opens it with a full-scale pop concert setup, complete with an intricate overhead light grid. It`s a fine set on its own. But this huge, complicated assembly rotates, slides forward, inches back--and tilts up on edge. Lights from it blind the audience and the whole thing slowly sinks through the stage.

Then the entire back of the theater begins to move--a vast circle, flashing with lights, inching out to become a 38-foot flying saucer eerily sinking to the floor.

Before long the intricate rear wall releases a huge light-spangled globe. It detaches itself, floats out without apparent support, halts in mid-air and splits, opening like a walnut. Its kernel is Laurence Olivier, a talking head 15 feet high.

And all that is just the first scenes of ``Time.``

At one point Napier has to bring on some space travelers. With breathtaking insouciance he unfolds two gigantic mechanistic legs from the roof. Like something out of ``Star Wars`` they grope down to the stage in a dazzle of self-contained lights.

The new characters descend like balletic spiders on thin ropes from the ceiling. Then the spaceship legs fold up and are never seen again.

``Time`` is full of such scenic inventions which would sustain many another show on their own.

Napier floats in three celestial judges on intricately lighted thrones that hover in midair. With no visible support they soar continually, crisscrossing the stage and never touching ground.

His giant flying saucer hovers, tilts, levitates, sprouts concealed platforms. Everywhere, even whirling within the auditorium walls, are lights, lights, lights."

BEST
Mary Poppins (prefer the original Prince Edward house, but think the tour is pretty cool too)
Sweeney Todd (both productions at Chichester and the Welsh National Opera - Sweeney I think is a show that always can have an interesting set)
Little Shop of Horrors at the Birmingham REP (very B movie set with bright colours and the dentists was on a mouth and tounge that licked it's way round the front of the stage)
Threepenny Opera, NT (of course, very cheap looking but effective, especially on the Olivier's drum revolve)
I know it was first done in Shrek on Broadway, but the use of the multi-revolve for Groundhog Day was incredibly effective.

Don't want to say worst, but it would be tempting to put The Wizard of Oz (Palladium) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory into "best" but something about them left me a bit underwhelmed, despite a lot of people liking them both.

I really liked the Oliver set for the Rowan Atkinson/Jodie Prenger production. It was quite an amazing set in my opinion.