1776
By Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone, Goodspeed Musicals, dir: Rob Ruggiero

"Goodspeed Musicals’ revival of 1776 was the first time I’d seen Peter Stone’s rousing salute to the Founding Fathers onstage since the original road-show version came to St. Louis 35 years ago. That production was a spectacular piece of work whose quick-change set (designed by the legendary Jo Mielziner) is still clear in my mind’s eye. I wondered how Goodspeed could squeeze the whole show onto the tiny stage of it’s 130-year-old theater without breaking something, but no sooner did the red-white-and-blue curtain go up on Michael Schweikardt’s handsome-looking version of the Chamber of the Continental Congress than I knew I was in good hands. Goodspeed’s 1776 is a masterpiece of compression, a production that more than makes up in stylishness for what it lacks in costly gimmickry."

-Terry Teachout, The Wall Street Journal


"When the curtain rises on Michael Schweikardt’s stunning diorama of a set for 1776, it’s like seeing a living portrait of a great moment from history."

-Frank Rizzo, Variety


"1776 is a bracing, perfectly pitched production at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam. Michael Schweikardt turns the theater’s small, Victorian-era stage into a terrific asset, concentrating the action and the emotions within a Wedgwood-blue backdrop of federal columns, cornices and pediments."

-Sylviane Gold, The New York Times



Big River
By Roger Miller and William Hauptman, Goodspeed Musicals, dir: Rob Ruggiero

"There’s no way to get to the Goodspeed Opera House from any direction without coming face to face with the grandeur of the Connecticut River, broad and beautiful as it passes the theater’s boat dock and the town of East Haddam. So pity the set designer Michael Schweikardt. With all that scenery right outside the door, he had to somehow conjure up the mighty Mississippi on Goodspeed’s small, 19th-century stage, so that those two all-American runaways, Jim the slave and Huckleberry Finn, could float their raft downstream to the music of Roger Miller. He did it. After the rough boards that serve as backdrop for the opening scenes of Big River fall away, a luminous expanse of meandering stream, grassy mudflat and open sky materializes on the stage. As lighted by John Lasiter, the painted landscape takes us through days and nights on the Mississippi that might seduce Mark Twain himself."

-Sylviane Gold, The New York Times



Barnum
By Cy Coleman, Michael Stewart, Mark Bramble, Asolo Repertory Theatre/Maltz Jupiter Theater, dir: Gordon Greenberg

"But it is the entire production package, designed by Michael Schweikardt, that is the most memorable aspect of the evening. The circus will have a hard act to follow the next time it comes to town."

-Hap Erstein, TCPalm News