Anastasia: The Musical

Little Theatre of Fall River, May 2025

Director: Aaron Gendreau-Visco

Scenic Design: David Allen Jeffrey

Choreography: Elle Gendreau

Music Direction: Bobby Perry

Costumes: Emerald City Theatrical

Concept:

There is no light without darkness. In designing this production of Anastasia I wanted to create an environment that could support the journey taken by all of our characters and make the audience feel the romance of the Romanovs pre- 1917, the starkness of post-revolutionary St. Peterburg and the vibrancy of Paris in the 1920's. Many people think of Anastasia as just another princess movie, but there is a darkness behind the entire story, and without embracing that darkness, we cannot truly appreciate the light that comes at the end of the journey.

Design:

The show itself was written to be performed in front of an LED screen showing projections, so there are a lot of quick transitions and the characters are never in the same place more than once so the challenge was to design a show on the scale of a big Broadway musical in a Black Box space and not sacrifice the pacing or the sense of grandeur while keeping the scale of the pieces appropriate to the space which was a challenge.

Projections:

In designing the projections, I wanted to mirror the characters journey from the bitter realities of St. Petersburg in the 1920’s to the romance of the Jazz Age in Paris without leaning too much in the direction of fairy tale. For the scenes taking place in Russia, I used black and white photos of the period, including negatives to support the harshness and bleakness of the physical scenery. For Paris, I chose to lean into the story’s shift away from realism to romance by utilizing paintings which show an idealized and less realistic view of Paris. The first time we see a projection in color is when our three main characters arrive in France and the fields off the French countryside are illustrated in vibrant colors.