In Memoriam: Eugene Lee

	Eugene Lee

Eugene Lee, arguably one of the most important and influential scenic designers of his era, who carved out major careers on Broadway, television, and the resident theatre scene, died on February 6 He was 83.

A native of Beloit, Wisconsin, Lee was interested in the stage early in his youth, thanks to his parents who were involved in community theatre. Also, he told Yale Alumni Magazine, "My high school built a brand-new building just as I was getting ready to enter my high school years. It had a fabulous theatre -- two theatres, actually!" Having earned BFAs from Art Institute of Chicago and Carnegie Mellon University, he attended Yale School of Drama in 1966, studying with the noted designer Donald Oenslager. He left Yale a year later, ultimately being granted his MFA degree in 1986, thanks to the interventional of a classmate, the noted costume designer Carrie Robbins. Later in life, he earned three PhDs, according to Variety.

Lee, known for his brilliantly architectural, often epic designs, arguably had his career shaped by three colleagues. The first was Adrian Hall, the longtime artistic director of Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island. Hall, a natural innovator unafraid of controversy, gave Lee a canvas on which to create elaborate, original design work. Beginning with his company debut, The Importance of Being Earnest in 1967, Lee's credits at the company included Billy Budd (1969), Peer Gynt (1974), Tom Jones (1975), King Lear (1977), and American Buffalo (1978). He was particularly adept at bringing to life such epic, often hallucinatory Hall productions as Robert Penn Warren's Brother to Dragons (1968); Robert Lowell's The Old Glory (1969); Wilson in the Promised Land (1970), Lovecraft's Follies (1970); the Oscar Wilde bio drama Feasting with Panthers (1974); Cathedral of Ice, a wildly divisive piece about Nazism, eugenics, and Native Americans; and Eustace Chisolm and the Works (1976), adapted from a novel by James Purdy.

A longtime resident of Rhode Island, Lee continued working at Trinity after Hall had moved on, designing The School for Wives (1991), Homebody/Kabul (2002), Twelfth Night (2010), The Fantasticks (2007), Camelot (2010), Oliver! (2014), Marisol (2019), A Tale of Two Cities (2020), and the company's annual productions of A Christmas Carol. Ironically, Hall died only a few days before his longtime collaborator. Lee remained resident set designer at Trinity until his death.

The second important collaborator was director Harold Prince, whose knack for large-scale concept stagings found a brilliant interpreter in Lee. The designer had very few New York credits before Prince tapped him for his environmental production of Leonard Bernstein's operetta Candide, staged first by Chelsea Theatre Center and later at the Broadway Theatre. The production, with a revised book by Hugh Wheeler and additional lyrics by Stephen Sondheim -- and played on a set that engulfed the entire theatre -- reversed the fortunes of a legendary failure, paving the way for Candide to become an opera house favorite. A few years later, Lee designed the original production of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which rendered Victorian London as a brutal Industrial Era factory. Indeed, Lee had famously deconstructed a disused New England facility, reconstructing on the stage of the Uris (now Gershwin) Theatre.

Among Lee's notable Broadway productions are Merrily We Roll Along (1982), Agnes of God (1982), Show Boat (1996, another grand-scale design for a Prince production), the equally elaborate Ragtime (1998), Wicked (2003), and Bright Star (2016). His Off Broadway credits include The Normal Heart (1985 and 2004), Horton Foote's The Widow Claire (1986), Caryl Churchill's A Number (2004), The Hairy Ape at Irish Repertory Theatre (2006), the musical The Fortress of Solitude (2014), and Napoli, Brooklyn (2017).

The third important collaborator was producer Lorne Michaels, who brought on Lee as set designer for a new television comedy show, Saturday Night Live in 1975. Excerpt for a couple of years when Michaels left the series, Lee remained onboard until his death. For decades, he and his team and churned out as many as a dozen sets in a week to meet the show's demands -- all accomplished while he was producing designs large and small for the theatre.

As Lee self-deprecatingly told the magazine GQ, "I was living on a 50' boat in Rhode Island, I still live in Rhode Island. Lorne Michaels came to New York and saw my little show that I did, a Leonard Bernstein musical called Candide, which we first did in Brooklyn and then took to Broadway. It was a big hit -- got a Tony award for it. Lorne couldn't find a television designer that he liked, and then he saw Candide and I guess he liked it OK. So, I got a call one day on my boat while I was out rowing around the cove, and here was some guy from NBC saying that there's this Canadian producer who is doing a comedy-variety show and he'd like to meet you if you're interested. I visited Lorne's room at the Plaza Hotel to discuss the role and he invited me to a comedy club that evening. A big guy came up to our table and said, "Is he hired yet?" It was Dick Ebersol, the NBC entertainment executive. Anyway, that was it."

Lee's other film and television projects include an uncredited production design for Francis Ford Coppola's Hammett (1982), the Rodney Dangerfield vehicle Easy Money (1983), Mr. North (1988), The Primetime Emmy Awards (1989), The Kids in the Hall (1988 - 89), Vanya on 42nd Street (1994), a TV film of On Golden Pond (2001), the series Maya and Marty (2016), and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (2014 - 18). He was a consulting producer on the popular video series Schmigadoon!

Lee won three Tony Awards, for Candide, Sweeney Todd, and Wicked. He was nominated for Ragtime. He won Drama Desk Awards for an Off-Broadway production of Alice in Wonderland, Candide, Show Boat, and Wicked. He was nominated for Sweeney Todd, The Hothouse (by Harold Pinter), Ragtime, and the Off-Broadway production The Ruby Sunrise.

Among other accolades, he won six Emmys out of 18 nominations as well as the Lucille Lortel Award, The Elliot Norton Award, the Pell Award, and the DesignxRI Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2006, was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame, located in the Gershwin Theatre, home of Sweeney Todd, Show Boat, and Wicked. He also served as an adjunct professor at Brown University.

In a statement, Curt Columbus, Trinity Rep's artistic director, said, "Eugene Lee was a once-in-a-generation theatre artist, one of the greatest minds to ever answer the question 'What is theatre?' He was simultaneously playful and profound, childlike and rigorous, a genius who sees the world in ways that others only dream. Every time I worked with Eugene as a designer, my work as a director became more bold, more expansive, and more true. It is one of the greatest honors of my life in the theatre that I could call Eugene Lee my collaborator and my friend. Words cannot express how much he will be missed."

Lee, a famously natty dresser with a fondness for bow ties, was a hive of industry and, by all accounts, a beloved collaborator. He was married to the costume designer Franne Lee from 1970 to 1980. He is survived by his wife Brooke, sons Willie and Ted, their wives and children, and his brother Ted. The family has requested that donations be made to the Providence Animal Rescue League, the RI Community Food Bank, WaterFire Providence, and Trinity Rep. A celebration of his life will be held at a future date.