How two Broadway musicals embrace immersive designs

The set designers of last season's Cabaret and this season's Just In Time have not just created scenery, but fully reimagined the layout of their shows' venues.

People might imagine entering a Broadway theatre and seeing a red velvet curtain, audiences on different floors, and a pit where the orchestra plays. That’s not the case at the Circle in the Square Theatre, particularly for Just in Time, the new Jonathan Groff-led musical playing at that venue this spring.

“Just in Time is staged very immersively,” scenic designer Derek McLane told New York Theatre Guide. “Unlike a typical Broadway proscenium stage, at Circle in the Square, the other audience members are always in your field of view, so it is a very communal space.”

Immersive designs are not new to Broadway, but each one creates a uniquely heightened audience experience. In 2023, designer David Korins turned the Broadway Theatre’s ground level into a dance floor for Here Lies Love, with actors performing on a spinning central platform and multiple other platforms scattered throughout the venue. Similarly, McLane's vision for Just in Time is modeled on a nightclub.

Circle in the Square’s intimacy lends itself nicely for a unique design, which McLane calls “very exciting — and director Alex Timbers has really embraced that.”

Just in Time follows the life and career of Grammy Award winner Bobby Darin, played by Groff, who returns to Broadway hot off his Tony Award-winning turn in Merrily We Roll Along last season.

“The thing that really struck me about the musical from the beginning was how conversational Jonathan Groff is,” McLane, a Tony and Emmy winner, said. “He has a very easy and charismatic interaction with the audience that is absolutely lovely.”

That allowed McLane to embrace what he calls an “audience-forward” design: “When you come into the space, you will be walking into a nightclub,” he said. “It has a kind of luxurious, 1950s lounge feeling, and that’s part of the fun of the show when audiences come in.”

McLane is no stranger to creating a club-like atmosphere — or to working with Timbers, the show’s Tony-winning director.

“I designed [the Broadway musical] Moulin Rouge! with Alex, so I feel like we long ago started this dialogue of creating a space that is a club for the audience,” he said. Moulin’s “was from 1899 Paris, and now we’re creating a club that feels like it’s from 1950s New Jersey or New York.” A tiered section for the live band further brings audiences into a club setting.

Plus, some audiences at Just in Time will be right in the action. “The deck, which is normally the stage for the performance area, has tables and chairs for audiences, so audiences are everywhere in the space,” McLane said. “The actual stages — there are a couple of them — feel like a little stage in a nightclub.”

With only 751 seats all on one level, Circle in the Square is smaller than most Broadway theatres, meaning McLane was working with a tighter space. “It’s really about making every inch count,” he said.

On the other hand, since spring 2024, a revival of the classic musical Cabaret has seen the August Wilson Theatre transformed into the Kit Kat Club of 1930s Berlin. For Tony Award-winning designer Tom Scutt, creating an immersive Cabaret experience in a larger venue, with 1,275 seats and two levels, had its own challenges.

“How you can make the space feel labyrinthine and maze-like was the biggest challenge to work out,” Scutt said of the Wilson, which he called three times larger than Cabaret's home in London. (Director Rebecca Frecknall's production premiered there before coming stateside.) “It’s hard to lose your bearings and forget where you are in space that’s so big. In London, you get that stuff for free because it’s already so small and windy.”

Finding your way to your seat is one part of Cabaret’s immersive design, but another is the pre-show performance, in which musicians and dancers perform in the remodeled theatre lobby starting an hour before the main show. The actors also move among and interact with the audience at times throughout Cabaret.

“This is a quasi-immersive experience; it’s almost a double bill,” Scutt said. “There’s a prologue with the performers and then Cabaret, where you sit down and watch a musical. You get the best of both worlds: you need to come in and be ready to explore and look around. Come early.”

McLane, like Scutt, has crafted an experience with many pockets to explore.

“We have a lot of little details in the set, and they’re not just on stage,” he said. “They’re going to be throughout the space, and I hope that between acts or after the show, when the audience members aren’t completely absorbed by the performances, they can take in some of those details.”

Get Cabaret tickets now.

Check back for information on Just in Time tickets on New York Theatre Guide.

Just in Time photo credit: Jonathan Groff and the cast of Just in Time performing at So & So's Piano Bar. (Photos by Michaelah Reynolds)
Cabaret photo credit: Adam Lambert, Auli'i Cravalho, and the cast of Cabaret on Broadway. (Photos by Julieta Cervantes)