Show Boat. (Eugene Lee's set design for 'Show Boat'; includes related article on Richard Pilbrow's lighting design)

"I don't prefer proscenium stages. I like to bust them apart," says two-time Tony Award-winning set designer Eugene Lee on the morning after the opening of Show Boat. The $8-million revival of the classic Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein II musical was designed by Lee and directed by Harold Prince for the 1,850-seat Main Stage Theatre in Toronto's brand-new $48-million North York Performing Arts Centre. Other members of the acclimed design team include Florence Klotz (costumes), Richard Pilbrow (lightining), and Martin Levan (sound).

Dressed in a well-worn safari-type jacket abd baseball cap, Lee accepts compliments with mild surprise. "I only look at the flaws and how it could have been better," he says. "Those piles of boxes could be lowered. At one point, you just have to stop."

Detail, authenticity, and fluidity are key components in Lee's spectacular design for Show Boat. Blessed with a huge stage, spacious wings, a limitless budget, two and a half year's lead time, and "left completely on our own," Lee, with associate Peter Baran and assistant Randi Savoy, set out to recreate life on the Mississippi and in Chicago over …