Left, inspiration, above, Oliver Dennis squeezes what he can out of his performance. Right, long view of set from house left sans dramatis personae
workbook: parfumerie
Here are some ideas, sketches and images from our Soulpepper production of Parfumerie
Left, Maev Beatty goes shopping at Hammershmidt, above Miklos Laszlo, author of Parfumerie
Brenda Robins and Adam Pettle, adapters of Parfumerie. It was Brenda who brought the project to Soulpepper because of her great love for the movie The Shop Around the Corner, above. Upper right, Patricia Fagan and Oliver Dennis reinvent the unwitting penpals. Below left, Joe Zeigler as Hammershmidt, apologizes to his employee, and right, Dennis and Fagan mid-swoon
Below, left, Kevin Bundy as Kadash, serves a customer, in this case Noah Reid, who also played the part of a young employee and composed, arranged, and performed the gypsy influenced music for the show. This talented young actor was the star of Trespassers at Stratford, and we were glad to discover his musical talents while working with him there. This shot was taken during our dress rehearsal. One can only imagine the improvised dialogue, in a scene with so many customers and employees,
Above, quarter inch scale model of the set. The original design called for a moving front door unit which would move upstage into position after the opening sequence, but the idea was scrapped owing to cost and physical logistics which prevented the overhead glass awning from fitting into position. Right, set construction crew put finishing touches on Parfumerie sixteen foot shelves based on drawings below
Left, molded pieces for window and door frames, seen painted and in place in picture, right. The pieces are carved out of pink styrofoam then covered by props person, Jane, in a fibreglass application, in many pain-staking layers, making them very hard and chip resistant, and then they are painted by the scenic artists to look like burled wood, and attached to the window and door frames, giving our Parfumerie a distinctly Art Nouveau look, popular in design at the turn of the last century, and a style much in evidence in European cities like Budapest, at one time one of the worlds most sophisticated cities.