Maybe Happy Ending Designer Dane Laffrey Likes to 'Push Dramatic Sequences to the Limit'

When Darren Criss told Playbill in September 2024 that his forthcoming Broadway outing, Maybe Happy Ending, would be "something that you have never seen the likes of before on a Broadway stage,” with "[Phantom of the Opera] level of production," one might have suspected the former Glee star was simply getting carried away by the prospect of originating a role in a new Broadway musical.

But the actor was not exaggerating.

Maybe Happy Ending, which has amassed an extremely loyal fan base since opening to rave reviews in October at the Belasco, is one of the most visually exciting productions of the season, thanks in large part to scenic designer Dane Laffrey, who is also credited with additional video design (with video designer George Reeve).

Laffrey's set, which features two separate apartment rooms that open, close, shrink, and grow, both moving with awe-inspiring precision, is also breathtakingly beautiful (especially when there are fireflies involved).

The charming and often-touching new musical—co-starring Criss and Helen J Shen as two Helperbots facing their own obsolescence—features direction by Tony winner Michael Arden, with whom Laffrey has a lengthy working relationship; the duo met at Michigan's Interlochen Arts Academy. Laffrey designed the costumes and scenery for Arden's Tony-nominated revival of Spring Awakening; the scenery for Arden's Tony-winning revival of Once On This Island; the costumes and scenery for Arden's Jefferson Mays-led production of A Christmas Carol, which the designer also co-conceived; and the scenery for Arden's Tony-winning revival of Parade.

Laffrey's Broadway work also includes scenic designer for Sam Shepard's Fool for Love and producing credits for Jen Silverman's The Roommate, Parade, and Sunset Blvd.

In addition to Tony nominations for Best Scenic Design of a Musical for Once On This Island and Best Scenic Design of a Play for A Christmas Carol, Laffrey won the 2017 Obie Award for Sustained Excellence of Set and Costume Design.

In the interview below for the Playbill series How Did I Get Here—spotlighting not only actors, but directors, designers, musicians, and others who work on and off the stage to create the magic that is live theatre—Laffrey shares the inspiration for his Maybe Happy Ending designs, what distinguishes his work with director Arden, and whose voice he hears in his head daily.

Helen J Shen and Darren Criss in *Maybe Happy Ending* Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

Where did you train/study?
Dane Laffrey: Interlochen Arts Academy and the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), Australia.

Was there a teacher who was particularly impactful/helpful? What made this instructor stand out?
I was really fortunate to have a few. Robin Ellis and David Montee were the force behind the training at Interlochen during my time there. They had an outsized impact on me, on Michael Arden, and on a very long list of other alumni. They instilled, among other things, a love for the art form and the importance of an artistic community.

At NIDA, I was mentored by an extraordinary teacher, Peter Cooke. His training was rigorous, relentless, punishing, and exhausting. And as such, he produced designers who are rigorous and relentless and never stop pushing for excellence and originality. Exactly 20 years after graduating, I still hear his voice in the back of my head…daily.

*Maybe Happy Ending* set rendering Courtesy of Dane Laffrey

How did you settle on the modern and sleek look of the show versus doing something stereotypically sci-fi?
I think a big part of why Maybe Happy Ending looks the way it does is that we actually leaned quite far away from a sci-fi vocabulary and instead tried to imbue the show with real-world visual references. Science fiction can imply wholly imagined spaces, whereas we wanted the characters to inhabit a world that the audience can recognize and connect to. The show works hard to blur the lines between technology and humanity, and future and present.

Oliver and Claire’s apartments are based on a very specific modular apartment building from the 1970s. This building was the most famous example of the utopian concept of metabolism architecture. By the time the building was dismantled in 2022, both the apartments and the idea behind them had sort of died. Somehow it felt like a very apt metaphor for the story and a tangible example of the kind of building we could imagine housing retired robots.

The neon-lined irises are also an important visual motif. And while they have a technological edge, the device comes out of old-school stagecraft. The negative space they create and the way they constantly shift our focus adds dynamism to the static existence of Oliver and Claire before they head out on their journey. And just as the irises confine and circumscribe space at the Helperbot yards, on Jeju island, their retraction is critical to creating the sweeping vistas.

Can you explain some of the cutting-edge projection and automation technology used in the show (versus a typical Broadway production)? Also, how does the firefly in the audience effect work?
So, we’ve packed a whole lot of tech into that theatre. I like to think that David Belasco, as an early and fervent embracer of theatre technology, would be pleased with us. I think the best way to talk about it is holistically, in that all of the scenic automation, video elements (and a not insignificant human element) combine to make a very complicated machine, which takes the audience on a 100-minute journey that’s basically non-stop.

I love how unique the experience of watching Maybe Happy Ending is for an audience. I think one of the things that sets it apart—and a feature of much of my work with Michael—is our shared willingness to push dramatic sequences to the limit, demanding the kind of precision and timing that leaves no margin for error. It makes our shows very nerve-wracking for us to watch, but all the more thrilling for an audience who can be constantly surprised by the storytelling and never sure of what’s coming next.

All I can say about the firefly in the audience is to assure everyone that it, and all the other fireflies, are proud members of Actors' Equity.

Why was it important to you to utilize such technology to tell the story, compared to some of the previous lower-tech productions?
When Michael and I started conceiving our version of the show, I don’t think we were especially aware of how the show had looked in its Korean productions. In general, unless I’ve already happened to see a previous version of something, I don’t seek to know how other artists have interpreted it. I’d rather start with a blank slate.

Our initial impulses were tied to how we could keep the production moving at the pace of the story, and how we could create the widest-possible spectrum of visual experience: from the closeups of Hwaboon in the first and last images of the show to a seemingly infinite field of fireflies on Jeju Island. The three irises do a lot of that work. And using those irises alongside the lateral movement of the apartment elements allows us to create really dynamic parallax as we move between Oliver’s room, the hallway, and Claire’s room.

And then, of course, there’s the matter of the video, and the sheer quantity of LED surface we have access to in the show. What I hope the audience notices, even subliminally, is that when we’re in those broader uses of video, we’re really lensed by the Helperbots and how they experience space and memory. They’re far from photo-realistic backdrops—rather, they are an important way into the interior lives of our protagonists, which culminates in video designer George Reeve’s truly breathtaking erasure sequence at the climax of the show.

David Greenspan in *Strange Interlude* Carol Rosegg

Not including Maybe Happy Ending, if you were asked to put one of your scenic designs in a time capsule, which would you choose and why?
I think it would be a design I did for Eugene O’Neill’s nine-act opus, Strange Interlude. I loved it, and given the nature of what it was, very few people got to see it. It was a one-actor version starring the genius David Greenspan, directed by my dear friend Jack Cummings III for Transport Group. The design was both theatre and set—we built two back-to-back stages, and the audience would move between them between the acts. While they were in one, the set would be changed in the other. And then the final two acts took place on top of the whole box, with the audience moved to a mezzanine space surrounding it. Only 50 people a night could see it. It was really extraordinary and odd, and entirely theatrical.

What is the most memorable day job you ever had?
For a couple of years on and off, I did costume design for dramatic recreations for shows on the Discovery Channel. One was called Monsters Inside Me… It was about rare parasites. The other was about first dates that ended in murder. Both frequently shot overnight at abandoned hospitals throughout the tri-state area.

Joshua Castille, Austin P. McKenzie, Daniel N. Durant, Alex Wyse, Miles Barbee and Andy Mientus in *Spring Awakening*

What do you consider your big break?
I’m not totally sure designers get “big breaks"; it’s a bit more of a slow burn. But crossing over into the Broadway space is always a big deal. I thought my Broadway debut was going to be Fool for Love at the Friedman, but as luck would have it, Deaf West’s Spring Awakening got the Horne (then the Brooks Atkinson) directly across 47th Street and opened a couple weeks earlier. So for that fall, my first two Broadway shows were running across the street from each other.

Tell me about a job/opportunity you really wanted but didn’t get. How did you get over that disappointment?
There were at least a couple of shows I had worked on Off-Broadway that transferred to Broadway without me, since at that point I hadn’t yet had a Broadway show under my belt. I think this tricky catch-22 is a somewhat common experience for designers—it’s hard to be hired for Broadway if you haven’t already worked on Broadway. But in the end, you eventually break through, and in retrospect I’m so glad that my Broadway career began when and how it did. Truly, the others weren’t meant to be.

What is your proudest achievement as a scenic designer?
I’m really bad at choosing favorites, but recently it has been to see Maybe Happy Ending succeed. It’s a wholly original show that didn’t come with a built-in audience, which made it a really risky endeavor in a commercial space. Michael Arden and I are also co-producers on the show, so I think about this holistically and not only as a designer. It’s been gratifying and reassuring to see Maybe Happy Ending find a passionately enthusiastic audience, and grow and thrive based on its own merits. It’s warm, unique, inclusive, and entertaining. And every week, thousands of people are coming to see it and being moved in a way that only live theatre can do, which is a really special thing.