Though the Missouri Repertory Theatre has changed its name to the Kansas City Repertory Theatre, it was still called the Missouri Rep when its late-spring production of
Liliom allowed set designer Nayna Ramey to pull out all the stops. Set in a seedy part of Budapest, the show unfolded upon a winding, gently sloped stone walkway that conveniently served such settings as a park and a railway station. When the story's second act called for a move to a place between heaven and hell, Ramey's genius was to suppose that such a place might include attributes of both. She broke up the walkway into four independently mobile chunks, like pieces of a fragile ice floe fringed with icicles; her hell was a glowing, orange cauldron in the center of the stage. Ramey's moment deserved applause all its own.
