**Scene**: ‘There’s No Place Like Gnome’
**Photograph**: Bentley Stevenson
**Featuring**: Medhi Angot as Garden Gnome, Gemma Hoskins as Philomène, Rachel McSweeney as Amélie, Craig Beardsworth as Raphael, Adriana Calabrese as Gina, Jared Pallesen as Lucien, and Monēt Faifai-Collins as Hipolito.

November at The Hannah has been all about Amélie the Musical: purposeful and intricate design across set, costume, lighting and props, seemingly endless collaborations between production departments, the thrill of making magic, and the energy of WITCH Music Theatre – whose producers went all the way to Broadway to sell their enthusiasm for this show to the rights holders themselves.

We had the absolute pleasure of talking to Ben Tucker-Emerson, Production Designer and Creative Producer on Amélie the Musical, as well as gathering some delightful and insightful nuggets from the crew behind the scenes of this whimsical world.

The WITCH behind the curtain

Ben Tucker-Emerson is one half of WITCH Music Theatre, alongside Technical Director and co-producer Josh Tucker-Emerson. Over the last seven years, WITCH has quietly (ok, sometimes very loudly), been reshaping how musical theatre can be imagined and presented in Pōneke.

They cut their teeth at BATS and Te Auaha, cramming shows that were “always a bit too big for the space” into black box theatres, and learning by producing, directing, designing these shows from the ground up That relentless DIY, ingenuity and creativity is part of why, they reckon, international rights holders were willing to take a chance on Aotearoa.

“We flew out to New York, and actually got into the Broadway producers' offices, to talk about it, and I think we sold them on what we are trying to make possible here in this country.” says Ben.

A box of tricks: the first visual idea

Co-director Nick Lerew describes the initial design impulse. “One of the first ideas we landed on for the playing space of Amélie was having a set design that served as a box of tricks. There are so many locations that we have to move through seamlessly and having a versatile set that could surprise and delight was key. Amélie's world is full of imagination and we wanted our set design to be able to accommodate her rich inner life.”

That “box of tricks” idea ripples through everything: the set, the costumes, the lighting, the way props appear and disappear. It’s Paris through the eyes of someone who notices everything: the way light catches something, the sentimental object purposefully hidden behind another thing.

The design team leaned into magical realism – that line between the everyday and the fantastical – while keeping the world grounded. This is not postcard-perfect Paris, but the lived-in, slightly grimy, working-class city of nooks and crannies, bookshops, cafés, metro stations and regulars who know each other’s faces but not each other’s stories.

The design pulls inspiration from Art Nouveau architecture and post-war reinforcements on older buildings, heritage structures that have changed hands, function and purpose over generations, and – crucially – a 1990s, analog world where connection still happens through handwritten notes, photo booths and chance encounters.

When the theatre lets artists cook

Ben explains that one of the quiet heroes of this production is time. “Musicals of this scale don’t spring up overnight. Internationally, big companies might get a month of previews to test and tweak with audiences. In Aotearoa, that is rare because artist schedules, competing projects, and limited resources usually force theatre into tight, unforgiving timeframes.”

That’s where The Hannah has been able to support a longer lead time for the show. For Amélie, WITCH had two weeks of tech and creation time inside the building. That’s not a luxury; for a show of this scale, it’s a necessity.

“Stagecraft and musicals take time,” Ben explains. “If we couldn’t afford to get into The Hannah for that long, we simply couldn’t make work at this scale. We’d be trying to build an entire world across multiple departments in three or four days. The two-week tech period is what lets us get closer to the level of polish you see in larger productions – and that changes how people see and invest further in New Zealand-made work.”

The tiny things that tell big stories

If Amélie feels rich with detail, it’s because the team has gone all-in. Ben estimates there are well over 100 unique props in the show, with “tchotchkes and trinkets, endowed with sentimental value for the characters within the show.” Many of them had to look worn-in and loved, so the props team embarked on a full-scale treasure hunt, combing vintage stores, online marketplaces, and then building bespoke pieces from scratch.

A few favourites include:

Nino’s photobook album – the prop that literally opens the show. Rather than mime or leave the pages blank, prop designer Courtney Ilton hand-made a full book of photo strips, collages and scribbled notes. It gives the actors a concrete history to work with every time they touch it.
Fluffy the goldfish – brought to life by prop designer James Fisher, who had to solve the puzzle of a fish puppet that is tiny and light enough to live convincingly in a bowl, can stand in the bowl without visible supports, and can “fly” out of the water and flop on a table. The solution? A clever magnetic rod system which connects to a magnet hidden in the fish’s head, allowing the actor (who later appears as a fabulously anthropomorphised goldfish in a 70s-inspired orange costume designed by Polly Crone) to fish Fluffy out and send it soaring.
The Garden Gnome – an iconic story piece from the film, here reimagined from the ground up. Production Designer Ben, Costume Designer Dorothe Olson, and James Fisher combined forces to create a design that could exist both as a handheld prop and as a full-body costume for a dancing, living gnome onstage by actor Medhi Angot

Dorothe explains that taking a timeless design and applying her typical ‘puzzle piece’ design approach was key to bringing this character to life. “Gnomes are fairly timeless, so much of the influence came from very specific sources in order to make him stand out… My favourite part was sourcing fabrics – the colour scheme was what immediately began to read ‘gnome!’ His vest is based off a heavily altered late Victorian pattern, his pants were custom-dyed after living a previous life as another theatre’s costume, and his hat went through three iterations before being made by hand using buckram, wool, and wire.”

Even the smaller, quieter moments in the show have received this level of care. An urn that appears for mere seconds is still fully realised to evoke the emotional depth from the performers themselves. Letters, handkerchiefs, chocolate boxes – they’re not generic placeholders but specific objects, carefully chosen and designed by hand. And they all exist to help carry the emotional weight of the story.

Dreamy sleeves, 1,300 rhinestones, and a leather-jacket Elton

Costume-wise, Amélie walks a delicate line: whimsical but never cartoonish, 90s but not stuck in parody, French-inflected without becoming cliché or too hard to make out. Costume Designers Dorothe Olsen and Polly Crone, and Costume Technicians Khrissie Rhodes, Rhys Tunley and Renske Gordon have filled the stage with subtle visual rhymes and hidden connections.

“I really like how Amélie's nun disguise, Fluffy the goldfish’s costume, and the Garden Gnome costume all have bishop sleeves (of a kind), with high waist lines… all of which are related to Amélie's imagination, and how she sees the world. Dreamy sleeves and a cinched waist across the board!” Dorothy reveals.

Some pieces are outright show-stoppers. One costume, with handcrafted additions by Khrissie, features around 1,300 rhinestones, 45 ostrich feathers and 30 individual pattern pieces.

Backstage, these pieces are treated like treasures. For them to last and retain their magic right to the end of the show’s two-week season, it is imperative that there’s a library system, locked cupboards, a gun safe (not holding guns) and VIP treatment involving multiple dressers every night.

Light, print, and a living painting

Lighting Designer Alex “Fish” Fisher says to pull off the layers of real-life-in-fantasy, the team uses light not just to illuminate, but to reveal – often in sync with the cast. “For the world to truly feel magical, it also had to be deeply grounded in realism. It is the contrast between the gritty reality of daily life against the fabulous world of Amélie's imagination that works together to keep the world alive.”

One of the most technically satisfying elements in the production, Joshua Tucker-Emerson says, is a special printing technique used on part of the set which is rarely used at this intimate scale in theatre. “Without giving too much away, we are able to achieve some beautiful reveals thanks to the lighting design interacting with a set piece that changes completely when hit by light from in front or behind.”

Building a world takes a village (plus lots of snack and a few Negronis)

Ben estimates that the creative team spent around nine months in pre-production – reading and re-reading the script, listening to the score, sketching, sharing references, and aligning on a shared language.

He describes meetings that sound more like dinner parties: everyone gathered around a table with snacks, Negronis (on occasion) and a stack of highlighters, talking through scenes beat by beat. Directors, designers, choreographer, producers all comparing how they see a moment, then distilling that into a clear, playable brief.

Concept artist Justin Cheung played a key role in this stage, taking Ben and Josh’s early designs, sketches and 3D models and painting over them to create detailed concept images. From the trim on shelves to the fixtures inside the set, these artworks helped the whole team agree on the “logic and limits” of the world they were building.

By the time rehearsals began, the world of Amélie already existed on paper and in everyone’s heads. The job then was to pull it down onto the stage.

Why this kind of work matters here and now

Listening to Ben talk, it’s impossible not to zoom out from this one production to the wider picture. “New Zealand’s theatre and musical theatre industry is still young. Many of our major institutions are less than half a century old. There isn’t a long-established, well-resourced ‘musical theatre machine’ the way there is overseas. But there are artists, companies, and venues who choose to make it happen anyway.”

That’s why spaces like The Hannah matter, Ben says. “When a venue says, ‘yes, come in. Take out the seating block. Take two weeks to tech’, it’s not just supporting one show. It’s investing in craft, ambition, and the possibility of a truly professional musical theatre scene in Aotearoa.”

Amélie itself feels like a gentle argument for something we might be missing. Set in a 1990s Paris before smartphones and infinite scroll, it reminds us of the magic in small, analog gestures: a handwritten note, a shared joke in a coffee shop, a photo you tuck away for years.

The show is full of rom-com charm and perhaps some accidental Christmas spirit, but it’s also quietly asking, what happens to us when we stop noticing each other? And what tiny, mischievous acts of kindness might bring us back?

Lightning in a bottle

If you make it along to Amélie the Musical, The WITCH Music Theatre team hope you feel the tangible details that hum under the surface of every scene. And if you find yourself noticing a tiny prop on a shelf, or an extra little detail in the corner of the stage, know this: someone, somewhere in the building, obsessed over that exact thing, for that brief moment of delight; lightning in a bottle, which makes the magic of theatre as real as real can be.