This set was designed and built for Icarus Theatre’s inaugural production at Toronto’s Alumnae Theatre, working with Director Liam Eric Dawson. Written by Kenneth Lonergan, Lobby Hero is set in New York City, late 2001, where in “the spacious, impersonal lobby of a middle-income high rise apartment building in Manhattan, and the street immediately outside the glass lobby doors,” four individuals negotiate their involvement in a murder investigation. Mirroring the script’s themes, the design was sparse, an intentionally garish and hypo-realistic framing of this largely incidental, transient setting. For more details about the play, see www.icarustheatre.ca/lobby-hero.
"The lobby set is charmingly, appropriately lean. In addition to Jeff’s desk and a simple seating area, its main element is a realistically painted but barely-there cardboard-styrofoam back wall that includes mailboxes and an elevator (which Bill uses several times). Minimalist brick piles form the lobby’s front wall corners, which allows certain scenes to take place in front of the building. The contrast of this flimsy setting with that looping, ultra-realistic dialogue is potent and resonant. After all, the lobby is just a loose pretext for these four characters to meet. It’s the happenstance centre of the circles of dialogue, in which these characters make situational choices that impact each other’s lives . . . and which, in turn, force further situational choices. The setting’s lack of solidity reflects the characters’ own lack of stability. What the ending leaves us to wrestle with is what all this insubstantiality ultimately means . . . and whether that lack may prove fatal to some – or all — of the four." — Scott Sneddon, SesayArts Magazine, 12/12/2022
[https://www.sesayarts.com/lobby-hero/]