Cable Street - West End & Off-Broadway

Role: Set Designer

CABLE STREET is a production that’s very close to my heart. My grandfather was one of the organisers, and participants, in the demonstration against Mosley so it’s a big part of our family story and identity. Being able to rethink this production for its third and fourth outings (!) moving from thrust to a proscenium stage has been a wonderful challenge.

The vision for the Marylebone Theatre design was to open out the world with a smashed and broken wood arch, metal portals, the block of flats that our characters are being evicted from present on stage and a distant cityscape of East London behind. Ingredients to paint the many worlds of the narrative with lighting and atmospherics. The front of the stage is a domestic space, ripped open to the outside world, which is invading it with politics and ideology as experienced by our characters in the story. To achieve all this I’ve used old-school false/forced perspective techniques to cheat the eye and make the most of the stage depth and width. Whilst it was in drawings and being built it felt like a risky roll of the dice, so it has been such a joy to see it land.

For the Off-Broadway design we had a much shallower but taller stage to play with and no-backstage, which meant we had to bring back the band-platform scaffold from earlier productions. We also had to create a cross-over for the cast, meaning we also brought back the brick wall with old advertising. This worked really well with the new mid-portals and broken up proscenium arch meaning New York got a 'best-of' all the design elements from previous shows.

CREATIVES AND CREW

Music and Lyrics - Tim Gilvin‍
Book - Alex Kanefsky
Director - Adam Lenson‍
Musical Supervisor - Tamara Saringer‍
Set Designer - Yoav Segal‍
Sound Design - Charlie Smith‍
Choreographer - Jevan Howard Jones‍
Costume Designer - Lu Herbert‍
Lighting Designer - Sam Waddington & Ben Jacobs‍
Producer - Dylan Schlosberg at 10 to 4 Productions‍
Associate Producer - Neil Marcus
Marylebone Set Builder - Ridiculous Solutions
New York Set Builder - Stone Dog Studios
Production Manager - Alex Firth at TPO

CAST

Orlaith & As Cast - Aoife Mac Namara
Ensemble & As Cast - Annie Majin
Ron - Barney Wilkinson
Kathlee/Oonagh/Mrs Gertz & As Cast - Debbie Chazen
Moishe & As Cast - Ethan Pascal Peters
Sammy - Isaac Gryn
Yitzhak/Steve & As Cast - Jez Unwin
Mired - Lizzy-Rose Esin Kelly
Sean & As Cast - Max Alexander-Taylor
Ensemble & As Cast - Michali Dantes
Rachel & As Cast - Natalie Elisha-Welsh
Elizabeth/Edie - Preeya Kalidas
Rosa & As Cast - Romona Lewis-Malley

REVIEWS

‘Segal’s brilliant set includes a fringe of mismatched planks, corrugated metal and lanterns, with two front doors facing each other. A hyper-realist brick tenement building in the background is enhanced by skilled lighting effects.’

★★★★ 1/2 - The Review Hub

‘Like the splintered, ill-fitting rafters that frame designer Yoav Segal’s set, this production wisely avoids a tidy ending. Instead, its clear-sighted sense of the high stakes of history is what makes it so deeply moving.’

★★★★ Time Out

Yoav Segal’s set scores with some wonderful c. 1930 flats down to brickwork flourishes upstage, with a jagged tenement horizon and the deep set is given wings of doors and windows opening above it.’

★★★★ Fringe Review

‘Yoav Segal’s design makes tremendous use of the Marylebone Theatre stage.’

★★★★★ Beyond the Curtain

‘The first thing you notice is the staging. It doesn't rely on massive set changes; instead, the stories just sort of bleed into one another. You'll be watching one family's living room drama, and the next second, you're swept into a street protest.’

★★★★ 1/2 London Theatre Reviews

‘Terrifically performed and staged, and entirely gripping throughout. It’s enough to instil hope in the potential of the British theatre scene to still produce lasting original musicals, and to fill the Marylebone Theatre’s modestly sized auditorium with genuine epic scale.’

★★★★ The Upcoming

'With its catchy, emotional, and powerful music and lyrics, and seamless set design that begs to be on a Broadway stage, Cable Street is truly exceptional.'

★★★★ The Front Row Center

MODELBOX

A few shots of the model-box showing how the design was envisioned.

Marylebone Theatre Design:

Off-Broadway (59e59 Theatre) design: