Original Broadway set recreated on Pitlochry stage for Once revival

It began life as an indie film shot in Ireland in 2007 before being turned into a musical which eventually opened on Broadway and later toured to London's West End.

Now, the original award-winning set design created for the Bernard B Jacobs Theatre in New York - where Julie Andrews made her Broadway debut - is to be recreated on stage in Pitlochry when​ a new production of Once reunites the entire original Broadway creative team.

Led by Broadway director John Tiffany, the Pitlochry Festival Theatre performance in May will include a painstaking recreation of the original set designed by Bob Crowley.

Alan Cumming, artistic director of Pitlochry Festival Theatre

The creative team working in Scotland on the first production of the show since a UK tour was cancelled due to the Covid pandemic in 2020 will also include choreographer Steven Hoggett, music supervisor Martin Lowe, lighting designer Natasha Katz, and sound designer Clive Goodwin, all of whom were nominated for or won a Tony award for their work on the original show.

Mr Crowley - who has designed sets for companies including The Royal Ballet, The Royal Shakespeare Company and numerous Broadway and West End productions including Mary Poppins and a recent production of Giant, about the life of Roald Dahl - said he had kept the original detailed model of the Broadway set, which recreated an Irish pub, where the bulk of the action takes place.

“The original set was broken up years ago, but I had kept the model on a shelf, so we just dusted it off and there we were,” said Mr Crowley. “It just fits into Pitlochry like a glove, it was amazing. The theatres are exactly the same size.”

Bob Crowley designed the original Broadway set now being recreated in Pitlochry. | Pitlochry Festival Theatre

He added: “I never expected it [Once] to come back via Pitlochry, but it is lovely.”

Once, produced on stage by Hollywood icon Barbara Broccoli, premiered in a workshop at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2011, before moving to an off-Broadway location and then into the Bernard B Jacobs Theatre on Broadway in 2012. Alan Cumming, who is artistic director of Pitlochry Festival Theatre, attended the Broadway opening night.

“We started off in a space in a theatre at Harvard University, it was a converted cinema and they were already doing a production there of a Midsummer Night’s Dream and we couldn’t move that set out,” said Mr Crowley. “Their set was a disco with a bar, where the audience could get drinks and we decided that would work quite well for us too. That was where the idea of the Irish pub came from, it was a natural progression.”

“After 24 hours, word got out that it was really quite special and we had all of these people coming to see it from New York.”

The Broadway theatre, formerly known as the Royale before being renamed for its longtime president in 2005, hosted Julie Andrews in her Broadway debut in The Boyfriend in 1954.

A spokesman for Pitlochry Festival Theatre said: “Fourteen years ago, the original production of Once opened on Broadway, and so we are delighted to announce that the original, Tony Award winning set designs by Bob Crowley are being revived for our production here in Pitlochry.

“Our talented workshop team are hard at work meticulously bringing the original designs back to life, down to every last detail, giving you the chance to see the stage as it would've been on Broadway in 2012.”