When I finally show you the windows that are the necessary for the set for Checking Out, you are going to be shocked. You will have the same reaction that the first-time visitor to the apartment had in Scene 1: “My word! … I didn’t know they had flats like these in New York any more.”
It is an anomaly. You have to know a lot about the architectural history of New York City to place the apartment in Checking Out geographically and in time. It’s time period and those windows, in that condition, are gone. For anyone younger than 100, you need to do a lot of research to get it right. I forgive 22 year old me for not getting it.
Prayer for the French Republic, which just closed on Broadway, is not so hard to get right. Quick! Don’t scroll down! What do the windows in a Parisian apartment look like? Nailed it! I don’t even need to look inside your head. You thought the same thing the rest of us did.
How Parisian are we? If we are “so French”, what part of ourselves do we lose when we leave? If the French prime minister says that if we leave “France will no longer be France” is it our duty to stay?
Arguably, those are the questions being asked in Prayer for the French Republic. The people and the home they are considering leaving need to look French if we are to invest in those questions. Also, they should look beautifully French if we are to feel what is lost for everyone, including France itself, if they leave.
Like most people debating whether to emigrate, the question of leaving the older generation behind seems like the biggest one. We don’t get to meet the endearing octogenarian until the end of the play, though. So, we can only imagine those stakes for the first 2.5 hours.
The other big potential loss is the middle aged characters’ careers, especially the woman. We get to hear about how important her job is to her, but we don’t get to see her doing it. I think we could understand the stakes of this best by looking at her clothing. If she looks like a boss, like a department head; we will feel the loss when we think of all of those adults we know - whose degrees and language didn’t transfer when they moved.
Those stakes are big - but really, they are not the focus of the play. The loss is not the job, nor daytime visits with grandpa. It is France.
The characters we meet are the branch of this family that historically have stayed. We learn that in the early 19th century their family escaped extermination in beautiful rural France where they had lived for more than a thousand years, and have lived in Paris for the 200 years hence. The ones that survived the last century’s attempt at extermination did so in the very apartment the show takes place in.
The play goes to great lengths to give historical context to this debate (heh…heh…literally great lengths; it is 3 hours long. Theater is my favorite way to take in a dissertation.) All of those words are funny and insightful and heart-rending. But they make the case slowly. We need to see what is at stake right away to empathize with them.
It has to be the set.
What’s more French than French doors? To American me, nothing.
I know that those windows are not every window in France, but boy, if you look at all of the news photos of Paris from any year, any year at all, the vast majority of Parisian windows share a lot with those windows above.
When you go inside apartments, they seem to share those proportions, too. Rich or not. Tall ceilings, tall windows, access to air, beautiful light. Most of the time there is a wrought iron fence on it.
Did the tall windows make it onto the set for Prayer for the French Republic? Let’s see. First there was the off-Broadway production at Manhattan Theater Club’s small stage,
then a show in Atlanta
followed by Boston
and Toronto
finally, back to New York City with a Broadway run with the same set designer and director as the original:
The set designer of the above production and the original, Takeshi Kata, only made the windows a big focus in this second production. Evidently, both this set and the first one did some spinning, so maybe that window you can see peaking out of the background of the first photo was more prominent at some point.
The set designer for the Boston run designed a beautiful, elegant home for them. I think you do see that they would lose some of that elegance if they left that place. There are just enough details to make it a particular place that is not here.
but, why didn’t he include the windows? I have never been to Paris. Maybe the whole audience has - so they know that Paris is actually about the ceilings, not the French doors. Next time I see him, I will ask.
Without the windows, those people could be fairly well-off folks anywhere. Maybe that was the intention of the Boston show - make this family seem like any financially stable family, anywhere.
You know, even if are going for very Parisian, even with the windows, this set risks looking like a suburban home designed to feel vaguely French-y. I can’t put my finger on why I think that is the effect of the Toronto set. Maybe the curtains? The freshness of the drywall and the paint?
Sometimes it works to just stick a thing onstage. Like, put a window onstage without the wall it is attached to….I am going to try that for this show. I will do a rough model for you tomorrow. I was just going to write about making this Paris show look like Paris. But I realize now that it is not as simple as getting the window right.
This show is another one that fails if you don’t get it 100% correct. This show, of all the shows making the rounds right now, does all of us the most damage if we get it wrong.
Pausing Window Week to talk about a piano tomorrow! In the meantime, please choose your favorite French window from the below: