The odd-character-out in any scene often hovers awkwardly, like a referee, on the sidelines of Paul Wonsek's depressingly drab set; all three performances start off at an overstated pitch.
Her gag about shouting at a burqa-wearing woman through the letter-box – "see how she likes it!" – had the place in welcome stitches after a drab set by Kate Nash, whose mumbled he-said, she-said mockney narratives were like unwelcome overheard schoolgirl natter from the back of the bus.
Additions to the Brighton & Hove High School, which had taken over The Temple, included a "drab" set of classrooms in the 1960s, a later administration block and a glazed sports hall in 2001 02 (the last two were designed by architects Morgan Carn Partnership).
But since the movie looks illuminated with a dashboard light, the drab sets are part of the mise-en-scène.
The comedy has been staged with a serious hand by Cheryl Katz, Luna Stage's artistic director, upon a thoroughly drab set designed by Charles Murdock Lucas.
You should know that Derek McLane's low, multipurpose and deliberately drab set is topped by a glorious canvas of the night sky around Central Park, as the ceiling of the Hayden Planetarium was.
THE drab warehouse, set amid the oil tanks and rumbling truckways of Jersey City's industrial tundra, is hardly the sort of place that chimes with the yuletide spirit.
A slow series of still lifes and drab interiors, set to gentle piano music, are interrupted at intervals by poltergeisty action -- crashing plates and insinuations of violence -- until all the stuff in the house, from the dismal décor to the rake teeth in the front yard, becomes dangerous, disloyal.
The wobbly camerawork, as if shot by a team of four-year-olds who have run off with the digicam; the mournfully drab municipal setting; the absence, God forbid, of a laugh track; the studiedly natural dialogue.
The birthing unit had been closed because of quality-of-care concerns, the bathrooms could not accommodate wheelchairs, and recruiting efforts often died as soon as, say, a nurse from out of town saw the drab efficiency apartments set aside for the staff.
