A Miniature Museum Full of Big Ideas

Designer Tony Walton is up on a ladder hanging a framed sketch of Nicol Williamson dressed as Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. “Hand me George C. Scott,” he calls to an assistant. “Hand me Lillian Gish.”

Scott, Williamson and Gish all wore costumes by Walton when they appeared on his set for Mike Nichols’ 1973 Broadway production of “Uncle Vanya.” Their likenesses are among some 80 costume sketches and set models by the New York-based designer in a retrospective at the Carole and Barry Kaye Museum of Miniatures.

For 40 years, Walton, 62, has set the stage for such luminaries as Bob Fosse (“Pippin”), Tom Stoppard (“The Real Thing”), San Francisco choreographer Michael Smuin (several ballets) and Bette Midler (whom he plopped in the palm of a 10-ton purple King Kong). Walton won an Oscar for his production design for “All That Jazz,” an Emmy for his design of “Death of a Salesman,” and Tony Awards for “Pippin,” “The House of Blue Leaves” and “Guys and Dolls.”

Filling the Museum of Miniature’s former library are set models from Walton’s Broadway productions of “Guys and Dolls,” “Grand Hotel,” “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” (1962 and the 1996 revival), film sketches from “Mary Poppins,” “The Boy Friend” and “The Wiz,” and assorted designs from other plays, musicals, operas and ballets.

Guiding a visitor around the exhibition, the affable English designer indicates that he takes his initial design cues from each show’s creative leadership. When first reading scripts, he tries “to avoid letting any strong imagery intrude or erupt, because if that doesn’t tie in with the way the director is seeing the production, you have a little subconscious tug of war going on. I try to let ideas simmer slowly to the surface through the sensibility of the director or the writer or whoever the primal force is on it. And then I just douse myself in the related materials and other research.”

On the Roundabout Theatre’s Broadway revival of “Picnic,” for example, he worked in part from photographs of playwright William Inge’s home that director Scott Ellis had taken during his own research. “Tony’s a terrific collaborator,” says Ellis, now working with Walton on the Roundabout’s revival of “1776.” “He brings to the table a really solid understanding of what he feels the piece is about.”

Walton also has introduced ideas Ellis might not otherwise have thought about, the director says. “On ‘Company,’ we felt [the central character] Bobby was in a crisis moment in his life, and I wanted the set to be more of a void, more in Bobby’s mind. Tony came back with a set that was black, mirrored and tilted. Everything was off. I hadn’t thought of it like that, and it opened my mind to go with everything a little more abstract.”

Economics are often a factor, a point well illustrated by set models from “The Front Page” and “Anything Goes,” 1986 and 1987 productions, respectively, at Lincoln Center’s Beaumont Theatre. If the central stairway of Chicago’s Criminal Courts Building looks amazingly like the stairs of the cruise ship in “Anything Goes,” it’s no coincidence. “I knew they were going to do ‘Anything Goes’ next,” Walton says, “and the theater has a tight budget.”

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Born and raised in Walton-on-Thames in Surrey, England, Walton is the son of an orthopedic surgeon who proposed to his future wife at a performance of Noel Coward’s “Bitter Sweet.” The young Walton initially wanted to direct, not design, but was mentored early on by English painter John Piper, who encouraged him to study stage design in school. Walton left for America in his early 20s with his “bride to be,” Julie Andrews, to whom he was married for eight years, and did caricatures for Playbill magazine for a year while awaiting design exams here.

Walton stuck primarily to design until last summer when Emma Walton, his daughter with Andrews, asked him to direct Coward’s “A Song at Twilight” for the Bay Street Theater in Long Island’s Sag Harbor, where she is co-artistic director. A few months later, he directed and designed Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of being Earnest” for New York’s Irish Repertory Company, and he will be back there in November to direct--as well as design--Shaw’s “Major Barbara.”

But Walton’s primary work remains design. He recently designed the set for “Not Waving . . .,” the first play by his author wife Gen LeRoy, and he just completed work on “1776.” In August he’ll head for Paris to design director Karel Reisz’s production of Pinter’s play “Moonlight.”

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, he worries aloud that sets and sketches aren’t really meant to be displayed in a museum. “They’re artifacts to try and convey visual information to the director, writers, actors and artisans who actually build and construct costumes and sets. Because they’re made of very impermanent materials, it’s kind of potluck whether they survive through the production process.

“In theater or film, you’re not dealing with longevity or practicality. It’s always the completed image that’s crucial. If a sketch or model looks complete without any characters in it, probably something is wrong with it. It needs to be space waiting for real life to animate it.”

* “Tony Walton: Designing for Stage & Screen” continues through Dec. 30 at the Carole and Barry Kaye Museum of Miniatures, 5900 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. (213) 937-6464. Hours: Tuesdays-Saturdays 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sundays 11 a.m.-5 p.m. $7.50.