February 18–25, 1999
hit and run
Small World
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The man who shaped modern Philadelphia will demonstrate his control over a smaller universe this week. Edmund Bacon, legendary city planner, will part the curtain Monday night on a miniature production of the ballet Cinderella, set to the music of Prokofiev. Presented as part of the Last Monday series, the pasta-and-performance evenings produced by Big House (plays & spectacles) at the Ethical Society on Rittenhouse Square, Cinderella will mark the first time Bacon has ever shown a Philadelphia audience the fruits of his labors in the wondrously refined art form known as toy theater.
Ed Bacon first spied the 26 x 31-inch theater he's using for Cinderella in a shop window in Copenhagen in the early '60s. A contemporary reproduction of the toy theaters popular in Edwardian England, he bought it because it was "just something interesting to look at." But he and his family soon started creating playlets for the tiny stage, some using fairy-tale figures Bacon purchased with the theater, and some completely original creations. Like "The Gubbiewatts," a fanciful entertainment dreamed up by Kevin Bacon (Ed's famous-actor son) when he was 6. It's a "wonderful little story" about a boy on a quest, says Ed, which he recreated for the cameras of the E! television network for their profile on Kevin.
Bacon crafted intricate baroque sets for Cinderella using illustrations from 18th-century designer Giuseppe Bibiena; his niece, artist Toni Famulari, created wonderfully individualized characters; and Big House vets Jonathan Sher and Janet Finegar are assisting. Bacon has also devised an amazingly effective lighting system for the theater, capable of such detail work as the illumination of minuscule candelabra.
Like city planning, staging a work for a toy theater is all about organizing a "sequence of sensory sensations," says Bacon. "It's very pleasurable."
