Apartments To-Die-For: Onstage

Oh, those love-at-first-sight moments. You fall for both the space and the design. Especially the design, which somehow evokes the sophistication of New York City in the perfect way.

Those book-lined shelves call to you. There is little or no feeling of being cramped into a small space in the big city. Instead, the apartments sell themselves with perfect proportions and so much space for entertaining that you could fit a theater audience in there with you.

Oh, wait ... there is an audience in there with you. Because you are in a theater. These spaces are works of the imagination, created by a playwright and a scenic designer.

Such Broadway and off-Broadway stage sets are perfect, except that they are fictional. Or is it that they perfect because they are fictional?

The New York Times' theater writer Patrick Healy got us to thinking about this with his recent article "Spaces to Lust For."