An Overhaul That’s Worthy of the Original

Who’s the star of “Titanic,” the stage musical? Here’s a big hint: The title says it all.

The ship itself is the leading character, more than any human role. The star is the set, more than any particular actor.

So when the Civic Light Opera of South Bay Cities production of “Titanic” opened Saturday at Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center on a budget of $750,000--nearly double the cost of any previous South Bay show--all eyes were on the creation by set designer Thomas Buderwitz.

Buderwitz, 40, had never worked for a civic light opera company, nor had he even seen South Bay’s Redondo Beach venue when he accepted the challenge of creating the latest “Titanic.” The assignment, Buderwitz said, “goes against what you’re taught as a designer--to service the play in an almost unnoticeable way.” In “Titanic,” with a cast of 37, many characters are only briefly developed. Buderwitz acknowledged a common criticism of the show: “People say the book is weak because it covers so much ground that it doesn’t really get you hooked on the people.” The set, however, unifies the show’s multitudes and becomes “its own character. The show is about the spectacle, to a point.”

But how can any stage compete with the James Cameron movie in terms of spectacle?

“It would be totally against our nature to even try,” Buderwitz said. Theater relies on suspension of disbelief much more than the movies do. “The smallest impression will work with suspension of disbelief.”

Buderwitz, however, is not settling for “the smallest impression.” His set cost $200,000. South Bay decided to go all out on “Titanic” as the best way to celebrate its 10th anniversary, said the group’s executive director-producer, James Blackman, who confessed to a personal fascination with the Titanic since he was in the fourth grade. “For one show, we’re going to pretend we’re Cameron Mackintosh or Gordon Davidson. For three weeks, we’re Broadway.”

Then again, South Bay hopes to recoup part of the cost, or even make a profit, by renting the set, costumes and props to other “Titanic” productions in coming years, for between $12,000 and $15,000 a week.

Buderwitz saw the Broadway production of “Titanic” but did not see the much criticized and stripped-down touring version, which played the Ahmanson Theatre in 1999. Comparing his own work with the set he saw, “I’m trying to be truer to the real ship,” he said. “Some of the Broadway design was very sparse. I don’t think it reflected the importance of the class structure well enough. The show is about how the classes were treated differently.”

Buderwitz contends, for example, that the real ship’s bulkheads were too low to be safe, because the ship’s designers “carved out bigger spaces for the first-class rooms. I want the design to reflect the fact that great amounts of money were spent on a small percentage of the passengers.” So the first-class sections are more ornamented and opulent than in the Broadway version, he said.

Michael Michetti, who is directing the South Bay show, added that the Broadway production arrived before the movie was released. “But now, everyone who sees this will know what the Grand Salon is supposed to look like. There is an expectation that is different from when the Broadway production was created.”

A major supporting player--the iceberg--was represented only by a miniature model on Broadway. “We thought it was important to bring the iceberg in,” Buderwitz said. “So a painted version in black light rises and looks like it’s approaching.”

The opening and closing scenes are also designed differently here. In the opening scene, the audience not only watches passengers boarding the ship, but a small fraction of the side of the ship arrives on stage. In the final scene, a scrim is used to separate the survivors from the dead, unlike the earlier version in which they mingled--an effect that Buderwitz thought was “too stagy and gimmicky.”

Nonetheless, though Buderwitz’s set may be “more realistic and elaborate” than Broadway’s, anyone who wants to see the actual ocean should go a few miles west.

“People ask me, ‘How are you doing the water?’ But this is not the Las Vegas version of the Titanic [in the casino show “Jubilee”], where they pump hundreds of gallons of water. This is suspension of disbelief.”

*

Growing up in suburban Westchester County, N.Y., Buderwitz was a kid “who liked to build things--and destroy them,” he said. “I liked to draw, but I didn’t think of it as art. I still think of it as a craft, until all the elements come together on the stage and create magic--which doesn’t happen in every show.”

Buderwitz was lured to that kind of magic on frequent trips to New York to see matinees, as well as by watching a sister who acted in summer stock. He designed his first show, a student revival of “Very Good Eddie,” when he was a senior in high school. It included scenes on a ship.

But Buderwitz didn’t learn his craft until he studied with Allen Cornell at Adelphi University on Long Island. Now the artistic director of Riverside Theatre in Vero Beach, Fla., Cornell designed the lighting and co-designed the set for the 1977 off-Broadway production, “The Passion of Dracula.” Buderwitz helped paint sets and build models for some of Cornell’s professional assignments, receiving valuable one-on-one instruction.

After graduate school at Brandeis, Buderwitz traveled west in 1983 to take a summer job as an assistant designer at Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts, home of the PCPA Theaterfest, in Santa Maria, Calif. He stayed there for two seasons, broken up by a season at a Denver company.

More lucrative gigs drew him to the L.A. area. His first job was for the Crystal Cathedral’s “The Glory of Christmas,” but he then entered the world of television. His TV projects aren’t necessarily high-toned Emmy candidates. He works regularly for Comedy Central’s “BattleBots” and recently designed UPN’s “Road Rage.”

Referring to a friend from Adelphi, the late “Rent” writer Jonathan Larson, Buderwitz said that he was the only one of his college roommates “who hadn’t sold out in some form. He remained the bohemian artist until he died.”

Buderwitz continued to design for theater alongside his TV work. On a 1986 production of “Streamers,” he met his future wife, Deborah Kamin, who was one of the co-producers.

In 1987, Buderwitz received attention for an acclaimed “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” that played with Seussian and “Sesame Street”-inspired imagery. It moved from PCPA Theaterfest in Solvang to the Westwood Playhouse (now the Geffen) for an unsuccessful commercial run. Although Buderwitz said the Westwood run was a mistake, South Bay producing director Steven Ullman recalled last week how impressive the “Midsummer” set was.

Buderwitz designed a number of shows for A Noise Within, including an upcoming “Hay Fever,” in which the design is conceived as a still-life because the characters are all artists. The set budget for “Hay Fever” amounts to about 1% of that of “Titanic.”

“Hay Fever” director Art Manke said Buderwitz “knows how to motivate movement by placing objects onstage.” The set designer “understands the period and the characters,” Manke said. “For him, it’s never just about making it pretty.”

Earlier this year, Buderwitz’s ominously looming residential skeleton for “A Delicate Balance” at South Coast Repertory drew raves. It was perhaps the best example yet of what Buderwitz describes as his affinity for ceilings. Director Martin Benson, who said that his initial concept for the production was “Pasadena with palm trees” before he decided to return to the original East Coast setting, credited Buderwitz’s “rare ability to not fall in love with his own ideas so much that he can’t accommodate change.”

Indeed, Buderwitz said he tries to maintain the flexibility of an amoeba. “Directors come in all shapes and sizes. I don’t want my nature to dictate.”

“He’s enormously versatile,” agreed “Titanic” director Michetti, who previously worked with Buderwitz on two single-set solo performances in sub-100-seat theaters. “When we did those shows, Tom and I sometimes craved something larger, more elaborate. Now, we’re craving single-set shows again.” But through all the stress of mounting such a big show, Buderwitz has remained “a great calm in the eye of the hurricane,” Michetti said.

Buderwitz said he hasn’t been especially tempted by most movies, which might require six months of out-of-town set dressing and decoration. Not only does he prefer to stay with his family (including two children, 10 and 7), but “I like to build a whole world from scratch”--even if it’s a world that’s about to be ripped apart.

*

“TITANIC,” Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, 1935 Manhattan Beach Blvd., Redondo Beach. Dates: Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends March 25. Prices: $35-$50. Phone: (310) 372-4477.