Staircases and their theatrical impact

The largest staircase I can ever recall appeared in a wonderful production by the Chicago Lyric Opera of Marc Blitzstein’s Regina (2003‐04 season), an adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes (1939). In Hellman’s play, a Broadway drama set in the American deep south, Regina Giddens, the matriarch of the rapacious, conscienceless Hubbard family, shows herself willing to go to any lengths, even robbery, fraud, and manslaughter by neglect, in order to capitalise on the benefits of new cotton‐production technology. The Lyric Opera production featured a gigantic red‐carpeted staircase at the centre of the stage, wide enough for the entire cast of principals to walk up and down upon abreast (though of course they didn’t do that), and sufficiently well thought‐out to include a landing a third of the way up, where a side table, lamp, and chair were set and where certain, more intimate scenes of the opera could be staged. The scene designer, John Culbert, had evidently read Hellman’s play carefully. The first thing mentioned in Hellman’s opening stage directions describing the Giddens living room is the upstage “staircase leading to the second story.” Subsequent directions indicate it has a landing, where, later in Act III, Horace Giddens, Regina’s husband, suffering from terminal heart disease, collapses on the stairs and falls out of sight as he draws his last breath.