Halfway Bitches Go Straight To Heaven by Stephen Adly Guirgus
NYTimes review, Ben Brantley
"The private conflicts so vibrantly embodied here have a way of sloshing out of Narelle Sissons’s capacious, multi-chambered set and flowing to the back of the theater".
LINK https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/theater/halfway-bitches-review.html
New Yorker review, Alexandra Schwartz
“There is a New York City street door onstage in Stephen Adly Guirgis’s rough-cut gem of a new play, “Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven” (at the Atlantic Theatre Company’s Linda Gross), the kind that’s not designed to attract attention—scuffed glass backlit by ugly fluorescents, decorated with metal placards announcing that the premises are under twenty-four-hour surveillance and warning against loitering. You’ve walked by it a thousand times and, if you’re fortunate, have never had to go in. It’s the entrance to Hope House, a government-funded halfway house for women on the Upper West Side, and, inside, a residents’ meeting is wrapping up. (The set, with its perfectly calibrated atmosphere of institutional idiosyncrasy, is by Narelle Sissons.)”
LINK https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/12/23/stephen-adly-guirgis-world-of-broken-women
Bernhardt/Hamlet by Theresa Rebeck
The Hawk Chicago review, Emily Schmidt
Narelle Sissons’ set design works to restore equilibrium, however, by constantly re-emphasizing the ideas about transformation from Act I. Some of the most quotable lines in the show revolve around an actors’ role in interpreting the script and imbuing it with life (and therefore, of how different perspectives and approaches should be welcomed rather than rebuffed). And Sissons’ design, which fluidly shifts along with the scenes, highlights this idea in a way the Broadway production did not.
LINK: http://www.thehawkchicago.com/articles/review-bernhardthamlet-goodman-theatre
What We are Up Against by Theresa Rebeck
NYTimes review, Laura Collins-Hughes
In the production’s bi-level set, by Narelle Sissons, we get a cross-section view of the office. With lumber and metal seams exposed at the edges, we see how this structure was built. It’s a metaphor for what Ms. Rebeck’s play does: rips away the smooth surfaces and lays bare the skeleton, where it’s plain that the rot is in the bones.
Pride and Prejudice, adaptation by Kate Hamill
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette review, Sharon Eberson
To allow this “Pride and Prejudice” to toggle its roots and modern-day sensibilities, the design team — Narelle Sissons (scenery), Christine Tschirgi (costumes), Masha Tsimring (lighting) and Andre Pluess (music and sound) — has reimagined the O’Reilly Theater. Normally a thrust stage, it is transformed into an alley that does double duty as a ballroom and grand or humble houses.
High above the action, chandeliers hung with streamers are more representations than grand fixtures, while scenes and even some scenery reach to the rear seats. It’s an O’Reilly open to new possibilities, a reflection of the play and playwright Hamill, who also has mined Austen’s “Sense and Sensibilities” and William Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair” with comic flair and a knack for reawakening the timeless resonance in another writer’s words.
ROPES by Bárbara Colio
NYTimes review, Michael Sommers
Designed by Narelle Sissons, this minimalist setting offers a nonspecific environment that suggests a number of different locations in conjunction with Mary Louise Geiger’s fluent lighting, which often makes dramatic use of side angles to produce looming shadows. Three steel wires stretched far overhead possibly imply how little the lives of the brothers intersect.
Such evocative visuals, as well as Theresa Squire’s insightful costumes, Stowe Nelson’s apt sound design and Daniel Kluger’s music for piano and percussion, are additional components that helpfully support the play, which is skillfully directed by Lisa Rothe.
