“Forty-five years ago All the Way Home won Tad Mosel the Pulitzer Prize, but in Transport Group’s new production it is Sandra Goldmark’s simple, striking set that first grabs your attention and that continues to refocus it throughout this demanding revival.
"Ms. Goldmark scatters eight doll-size houses around the Connelly Theater’s stage, each illuminated from within. When the actors first stride out and stand among them, the humans look like giants, domineering and invincible. But as the story plays out, revealing the characters to be ordinary people, venal and vulnerable, the effect changes. By they end they are more like ghosts hovering over the miniature village, where inside the tiny homes, unseen occupants are no doubt continuing to fight battles with faith and fate.
"The play is based on James Agee’s somewhat autobiographical novel “A Death in the Family,” and the director, Jack Cummings III, lets it play out like a novel, slowly, with much lingering over details. It’s an approach that requires a commitment from the audience, not just of time (nearly three hours) but also of emotional involvement…”
The New York Times, November 10 2006. By Neil Genzlinger.
“Five rarely performed Thornton Wilder one-acts make up Keen Company's “Such Things Only Happen in Books,” guaranteeing at least an audience of the curious. But what really makes "Such Things" tick, when it does, are the transcendent moments helmers Carl Forsman and Jonathan Silverstein find in the texts. A realistic writer gets his comeuppance without knowing it, an angel heals two people at once -- there's plenty here. The ensemble turns in smart performances, and Sandra Goldmark's gorgeous design aids the stagings, particularly the final one, in ways Wilder couldn't have imagined.
The latter is extremely touching and unexpected -- an impressionistic retelling of another Bible story, about a pool of water occasionally visited by a healing angel. The conversations between the sick and injured are surprising and textured, and when Goldmark's set splits open to reveal the pool, it's a terrific, theatrical moment (Josh Bradford's lighting is lovely here, too).
”
Variety, October 20, 2009. By Sam Thielman.
“Stairs to Transcendence: A William Inge Classic gets a 21st Century Makeover”
"In Transport Group’s stunning new production of William Inge’s 1957 work, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, the central image is, inevitably, the staircase that plays the title role, you might say, in Inge’s drama. But director Jack Cummings III and set designer Sandra Goldmark, having already demonstrated, with last fall’s All the Way Home, their gift for stripping naturalism to its bare bones, move a giant step further here: The staircase, framed by a gauzy portal of scrim, is the stage’s one solid element. No doors, no walls, no other furniture except a piano, occasionally visible behind the scrim upstage right. Even the people, in Cummings’s handling of this melancholic, death-suffused memory play, seem evanescent, drifting in and out of focus as they leave the forestage, often in midsentence to cross behind the scrim and vanish, sometimes while still speaking, at its outer edges…”
- The Village Voice, April 9th, 2007. By Michael Feingold.
“Set designer Sandra Goldmark creates Bracha's living room with a few wing chairs and some plain white walls, walls that come beautifully and unexpectedly into play in the final moments. It's almost a shock, afterward, to realize that you've seen a production of this caliber in an auditorium at the Chester Town Hall.”
- The Boston Globe, July 27, 2007. By Louise Kennedy.
“The simple set works beautifully to frame the characters' narrative skeins…a sort of spare patio area that provides ample space for the actors to wander as they unravel their war stories…”
- The New York Times, February 7 2006. By Phoebe Hoban.
“The production design is also striking, carving an intimate playing area with seating on three sides out of a larger space. Sandra Goldmark’s set is simple, elegant, and effective, anchored strikingly by a lush back wall of greenery representing Ginny’s garden.”
- nytheatre.com, February 3, 2006. By Loren Noveck.
“the set that Sandra Goldmark designed…has a number of unexpected tricks to offer. It actually serves the play better than the set that Broadway saw last season. And “The Pillowman” is not an easy play to serve.”
-The Star Ledger, February 27 2006. By Peter Filichia
“The setting is an anonymous totalitarian state and the stark interrogation rooms of its central police station, captured grimly by the set and lighting designers, Sandra Goldmark and Paul Whitaker.”
- The New York Times, March 5, 2006. By Naomi Siegel
“Sugan has always made an effort to use interesting settings. This time the job falls to Hughes’ fellow Yalie, Sandra Goldmark. She's surrounded the square playing area with tall steel shelves full of identical boxes bearing the company name, which is ominously "plode". Its ultra-realism--the clock even works and tells the correct time for the piece--sets off the absurdity of the situation and makes the climax all the more appalling. Those queasy at the sight of blood may want to stay away.”
- Aisle say, Boston. By Will Stackman
“If last year’s POPCORN was a roller-coaster ride, GAGARIN WAY is the trembling earth, about to erupt. Dafydd Rees’ Frank and Sandra Goldmark’s set design are the evening’s main sources of tension: Ms. Goldmark’s storage room is composed of stacked rows of cardboard boxes, all neatly square and so in place that you know things are bound to get messy --- listen for the faint, ironic musak whenever the door is opened ---“
- Theatremirror.com
“…and the rest of the cast all are wonderful in assorted smaller roles. They are well aided by Sandra Goldmark’s simple yet fluid set design (including a very functional modular archway and a versatile gauze curtain)…”
- www.curtainup.com
“When a contemporary, streetclothes drama depends so much on grand, loud performances, it's rare that much attention would be lavished on the environment. Sandra Goldmark's set and costume designs are doubly remarkable because they add a tactile reality to the character's often fantasy-filled world. Some designers would stop with the necessary props--milk crates, trashcans, dirty clothes--and not go the extra distance that Goldmark has, with a life-sized cinema marquee, a mechanical horse such as you find outside supermarkets, a paved cement sidewalk with a chink chopped out of it, and other loving details…Goldmark embraces the oddities of the play, and improves it with her diligence. More than any other element, Goldmark's work places us in the here-and-now and in the this-could-happen-to-me.”
- New Haven Advocate. By Christopher Arnott.
“Set designer Sandra Goldmark, of whom I'm quickly becoming a huge fan, has the right idea--her deceptively simple cemetery setting involves both immaculately carved realistic gravestones and an abstract "ground" of brown paper, which she carries through the Cabaret space by having the same brown paper used as tablecloths. Goldmark uses cheap effects effectively, from the paper earth to the branches and christmas-tree lights that dangle from the ceiling. Thanks to Goldmark, the stars come out in a night sky for this overplayed and overwrought old-world melodrama, and makes its world that much more livable.”
- The New Haven Advocate, July 17, 2003. By Christopher Arnott.
“As mentioned, the production, given its premiere staging here (after being a runner-up in last year's Kennedy Center New Play Competition) and polished as it was to such a highly professional sheen, was beautiful to behold. Sandra Goldmark's brilliantly conceived and executed all wood set was complemented by Daniel Ordower's precisely portentous chiaroscuro lighting…”
Equally impressive were the designs of both the set (Sandra Goldmark) and the costumes (Naomi Wolff). With its colorless shelving and evidentiary file boxes, the set unnervingly presented resonating images of a sterilized, deconstructive present and a romanticized past…
- Oobr.com
“The set, designed by Sandra Goldmark, consists of a platform which is rotated and flipped to create three distinct playing spaces. Particularly interesting is the third setting, where the wall is a tile floor from which a chair, trash pail, and trash hang suspended. I don’t want to give anything away, but the set allows for a beautiful final picture at the end of the show.”
- nytheatre.com. By Debbie Hoodiman
“The creative use of space was very simple yet specific, and set designer Sandra Goldmark deserves accolades for fitting a rollerdome-sized show into a small rehearsal space.”
- nytheatre.com. By J Jordan & Don Jordan