If home seems humdrum, time-travel to 1925 and enter the flamboyantly furnished Manhattan duplex of the Cavendishes. The theatrical family currently emoting at Steppenwolf Theatre lives amid several pounds of silver serving pieces, delicate fringed lamps, fencing foils, snowshoes, shirred eggs and a pair of St. Bernards (collective weight: 375 pounds).
The lavish set of “The Royal Family,” the George S. Kaufman/Edna Ferber comedy running through June 16, has been so richly dressed and propped that it may cause one to swoon.
The set, designed by James Schuette, is meticulously propped, down to the old-fashioned hairpins, pink linen hankie and perfume atomizer on lace-trimmed dresser scarves in the offstage bedroom of Julie (Amy Morton). “Nobody is ever going to see those hairpins,” said properties master Jim Lichon. “It’s really for the actors — to get them charged up.”
“All those details are an enormous help to an actor. It’s like you walk into the room where you live,” said Rondi Reed, who plays actress Kitty Dean and describes the Cavendish decor as “careless Bohemian chic.”
Here’s the back story on some of the most eye-catching of the hundreds of props and furnishings used in the play.
The piano: It’s a Hardman grand, made between 1842 and 1890 and rented from the Pickle Piano Company in Bloomingdale. “We deadened the keys because David New and Alan Wilder play it — but not really,” said Lichon. “The sound cue is wonderful because there is a speaker under the piano and it sounds like they are really playing.”
The silver: During the first act, Jo and Della (Yasen Peyankov and Marilyn Dodds Frank as butler and maid) heft large silver trays laden with silver coffee pots, creamers, sugar bowls, bud vases, egg cups, toast racks and covered serving dishes, plus china plates, cups and saucers. To avoid potentially disastrous slippage, especially when the tray-toting actors take the stairs, many items are “glued” down with dabs of rope caulk, said Lichon. “It’s gummy.”
“A lot of the silver pieces I found were completely tarnished so I got them cheap. I think one person polished for three or four days straight,” added Lichon, who worked on the show’s properties with a crew of four.
The food: Among the edible props in this show are vanilla Slim-Fast (a convenient stand-in for eggnog, said stage manager Rob Satterlee), a soft-boiled egg in a silver cup that Herbert Dean (B.J. Jones) deftly peels and eats, and a shirred (baked) egg that Reed “tears into” — except for the yolk, she said. Doing eight shows a week, “I figure my cholesterol count can’t handle that.”
She also eats a piece of buttered toast, drinks coffee (hot decaf, with cream), munches a butterflake roll, downs Manhattans (water with caramelized sugar), and pops gumdrops (though not all in the same act). “This is a big food and drink show,” she said.
The secretary: A turn-of-the-century black-lacquered Oriental secretary/desk is the most expensive prop, said Lichon. He purchased the hand-painted piece at the Merchandise Mart for $3,000, one-fifth of his entire budget for the play.
“We knew we’d never find something that elegant [cheaply],” he added. In it and on it are old bills and books, mail stamped and addressed to the Cavendishes, and 1920s magazines, including Life and Moving Pictures Stories. Lichon color-copied old covers and glued them onto current magazines and catalogs. “It’s how I get rid of my junk mail,” he said.
The fringed lampshades: Their look is Victorian. “They [went] nuts with lampshades back then,” Lichon said. But the lamps with fringed shades are not real antiques. “A lampshade that old wouldn’t hold up onstage.” Lichon and crew took stock lampshades from Steppenwolf’s prop department and decorated them with fabric, fringe, gold trim and beads.
The portrait: Prominently displayed above the staircase is a life-size portrait of the Cavendish family’s late patriarch and most famous actor, Aubrey, resplendent in regal costume. If it looks familiar, you must know the works of John Singer Sargent. The portrait, painted at Steppenwolf, was modeled closely after Sargent’s 1904 painting, “Sir Frank Swettenham.”
“It’s period-appropriate, but it’s also kind of a spoof,” Lichon said. “The figure in the Sargent painting looks like he could be in a show.”
The chaise: So far downstage that folks in the first row can practically touch it, the greenish-gold chaise is a prime place for Julie and Gwen (Sally Murphy) to collapse. It was borrowed from the Goodman Theatre’s prop department.
The breakable bust: In act two, Tony, the dashing character modeled on John Barrymore (and played by New), picks up a small bust from the piano and throws it in anger, breaking it. It’s a plaster model of “a 6-inch bust of Eros — a knickknack that we had,” Lichon said. “We made a rubber mold of it, poured in plaster and spray-painted it gold. Now we have a little assembly line at the shop. Each bust breaks into three pieces, cracking at the pedestal and the head. We didn’t want something that shattered all over the place.”
The hatboxes: Hatboxes in various shapes, sizes and colors arrive at the Cavendish apartment in towering stacks for Julie, a clotheshorse. A few of the boxes are vintage, found at a “recycle” store, said Lichon, but others were purchased plain at The Container Store and covered with patterned paper.
The dogs: The prop list for the original 1927 production calls for two “police dogs,” but when 3-year-old St. Bernard brothers, Gus (175 pounds) and Tanner (200 pounds), auditioned wearing their kegs, “Frank [director Frank Galati] fell in love with them,” said the dogs’ owner, Karen Cohen, who lives in the Lincoln Square area. “The boys,” as she calls them, who enter the back of her Jeep Cherokee via a ramp, arrive after the play’s second intermission, relax in the Green Room until it’s time to go on, then wait offstage with New before he leads them — actually, they lead him — onstage.
“They just head down stage-center like the rest of the family,” Reed said. “Last night, one of them let go with a big shake and, of course, with a St. Bernard, the spit just flies. One night they almost knocked over Sally, they were so happy to see her.”
Offstage, Gus and Tanner are rewarded — with Snausages.
PROPPING UP `THE ROYAL FAMILY’
Here are a few of the hundreds of props used in “The Royal Family” at Steppenwolf Theatre.
– 10 silver serving trays
– 12 dozen roses
– 1 violin case
– 1 sombrero
– 1 sunlamp
– 1 bird cage
– 2 fencing foils
– 20 hatboxes
– 2 cooked eggs (soft-boiled and shirred)
– 1 can vanilla Slim-Fast
– 1 scale model of multilevel German stage set
– 1 breakable bust
– 1 pair mother-of-pearl opera glasses
– 1 pink linen handkerchief
– 1 Western Union telegram
– 1 hot water bag
– 2 St. Bernard dogs
