July 15, 2026
By: Don Kearney-Bourque, Marketing & Communications Manager
Lighthouse Festival
Before the first actor steps onto the stage, before the first joke lands and before the audience begins unravelling the increasingly complicated plot of Secret Service, set designer Beckie Morris has already started telling the story.
The set is the audience’s introduction to the world of the play. It establishes where the characters are, hints at what might happen and creates an atmosphere that can be felt before a single line is spoken. For the world premiere of Ephraim Ellis’s fast-paced comedy at Lighthouse Festival, Morris was tasked with transforming the stage into an elegant and exclusive Italian restaurant filled with mystery, sophistication and more than a few secrets.
“The set is the audience’s first handshake with the story,” Morris explains. “Before anyone says a word, it tells them what kind of world they’ve entered.”
In Secret Service, that world is Il Glorioso Buco, one of Toronto’s most fashionable Italian restaurants. On what should be an exciting opening night, the restaurant instead becomes the setting for a covert operation involving undercover agents, suspicious behaviour, complicated plans and a rookie waiter who may be completely unprepared for everything unfolding around him.
The result is a theatrical mixture of espionage, farce and restaurant bedlam. The set must feel elegant enough to be believable as an exclusive dining destination, mysterious enough to support the spy story and practical enough to accommodate the physical comedy and rapid pacing of the production.
For Morris, the design process began, as it often does, with a small initial spark.
“I always have a little spark of an idea from the title,” she says. “Sometimes accurate, sometimes wildly off base!”
A title can suggest a mood, an image or an entire imagined world, but Morris says the true design process begins when she opens the script. It is through reading the characters, dialogue, action and stage directions that the needs of the production begin to emerge.
“The real design starts once I read the script,” she says. “That’s when the world begins to reveal itself: what the characters need, what the story is asking for, and what kind of visual playground we get to build.”
That idea of a “visual playground” is especially important for a comedy like Secret Service. A set is not simply a backdrop behind the performers. It is a space in which the actors move, hide, collide, misunderstand one another and attempt to carry out increasingly elaborate plans.
Every doorway, table, chair and sightline has the potential to become part of the comedy.
For Morris, the first strong impression she took from Ellis’s script was not necessarily a specific piece of architecture or furniture. It was a feeling.
“For Secret Service, the first thing that came to mind was atmosphere,” she says. “I wanted the room to feel elegant, a little mysterious, and full of possibilities.”
The restaurant needed to feel polished and sophisticated, but there also had to be something lingering below the surface. Morris describes it as “the kind of place where people look polished on the outside, but you can tell secrets are being passed under the table.”
That description captures the central contrast of the production’s visual world. Il Glorioso Buco must appear controlled and carefully presented, even as the situation within it becomes anything but controlled.
It is a perfect setting for a spy comedy. Restaurants naturally contain a sense of performance. Guests dress up, staff maintain professional appearances and private conversations happen in public spaces. People may be seated only a few feet apart while remaining completely unaware of the plans, schemes or secrets being exchanged at the next table.
In Secret Service, those possibilities are pushed to hilarious extremes.
Creating a visually impressive restaurant, however, was only one part of Morris’s assignment. The set also had to work for the actors, director and technical team as the production’s intricate action unfolded.
“A set can be beautiful, but if the actors can’t move through it naturally, it’s just very fancy furniture in everyone’s way,” Morris says.
It is a humorous observation, but one that points to a central challenge of theatrical design. A set needs to look convincing from the audience while also functioning as a practical performance environment.
A dining table placed in the most aesthetically appealing position may interfere with an actor’s entrance. An elegant chair may be difficult to move quickly. A decorative feature may obstruct the audience’s view of an important moment. Every visual choice has to be considered in relation to the action of the play.
“My job is to make the world visually rich while still giving the director and actors a space that supports the pacing, comedy, tension, entrances, exits, and all the sneaky little story mechanics,” Morris explains.
Those mechanics are particularly important in a farce.
Comedy often depends on precision. An entrance that happens a few seconds too early or too late can change the rhythm of a scene. A character may need to cross the room quickly, overhear part of a conversation or remain hidden from one person while being clearly visible to the audience.
In a spy story, characters may also be observing one another, exchanging information or attempting to carry out a plan without attracting attention. The physical environment has to support all those competing needs.
Morris’s design therefore becomes part of the production’s choreography. It helps determine how the action flows and how the audience follows the increasingly complicated relationships between the characters.
The challenge was to provide enough opportunities for movement and discovery without making the set feel obviously constructed for theatrical convenience. It still had to appear to be a real, fully realized restaurant.
“The biggest challenge was making the space feel stylish and specific without making it too precious,” Morris says.
A “precious” set may look beautiful but feel as though no one should touch it. That would be a serious problem in a production filled with physical action, surprises and escalating chaos.
“The set needs to support the story, hold the mood, and still be ready for all the action the play throws at it,” she says. “It has to look like a finished world, but function like a very well-behaved machine.”
That comparison between the set and a machine speaks to the hidden engineering behind theatrical design.
From the audience, the finished set may appear effortless. It looks as though the stage simply became a restaurant. Behind that illusion, however, is a complex network of creative decisions involving dimensions, construction, traffic patterns, materials, props, lighting positions and technical requirements.
Every part must work together reliably through rehearsals and performances.
The room must provide enough space for the actors to perform comfortably while still feeling intimate. The furniture must look appropriate for an upscale establishment but also withstand repeated use. Entrances and exits must be positioned to serve the script. Decorative features must create visual interest without distracting from the performers.
Like a machine, the design works best when the audience does not notice the mechanics.
Instead, they experience the overall effect: the glamour of the restaurant, the mystery beneath the surface and the feeling that the entire room is waiting for something to happen.
Many of the choices that create that effect are found in details that audiences may not immediately identify.
“Yes! I love those details,” Morris says when asked whether there are elements of the design that help tell the story without necessarily drawing attention to themselves.
The style of the furniture, the textures of the materials, the colours used throughout the room and the way the restaurant is dressed all contribute to the audience’s understanding of the space.
“Even when the audience doesn’t consciously clock them, things like the style of the furniture, the textures, the colours, and the dressing all help tell them where they are and how they should feel,” she explains.
A worn wooden table would tell a very different story from a polished formal dining table. Bright, casual colours could create a relaxed atmosphere, while deeper tones and richer textures can suggest luxury, intimacy and intrigue.
The objects placed around the room also communicate information. They can reveal whether the restaurant is old or new, traditional or modern, restrained or extravagant. They help establish the personality of a space before its fictional owners or employees have the opportunity to explain it.
Morris compares those visual details to the ingredients in a carefully prepared meal.
“It’s a bit like seasoning,” she says. “You may not notice every ingredient, but you would miss it if it wasn’t there.”
It is a particularly fitting metaphor for a play set in an Italian restaurant.
A successful design rarely depends on one spectacular object. Instead, it emerges from the accumulation of dozens of carefully considered choices. Together, those choices create an atmosphere that feels complete.
The audience may not leave the theatre remembering the exact shape of every chair or the texture of every wall. They will, however, remember how the room made them feel.
For Secret Service, Morris wants that feeling to combine elegance with anticipation.
“I hope it invites the audience to lean in a little,” she says, “to notice the atmosphere, enjoy the elegance, and feel that something deliciously complicated might happen at any moment.”
“Deliciously complicated” is an apt description of both the play and the space Morris has designed for it.
The comedy begins with a plan that is supposed to be carefully controlled. Undercover agents have entered the restaurant with a mission. They have roles to play, information to gather and an operation to execute.
But covert operations, like restaurant openings and theatrical farces, rarely proceed exactly as intended.
As the complications multiply, the refined atmosphere of Il Glorioso Buco becomes the setting for confusion, improvisation and frantic attempts to keep everything from falling apart. The more polished the restaurant appears, the funnier that unraveling can become.
The visual sophistication of the room creates a contrast with the chaos taking place inside it. The characters may want everything to appear calm and professional, but the set provides a front-row view of just how difficult that becomes.
That contrast also reflects the characters themselves. As Morris notes, the restaurant is a place where everyone looks polished on the outside. Beneath those carefully maintained appearances are motives, misunderstandings and secrets waiting to be revealed.
The set does not tell the audience exactly what will happen, but it prepares them for the possibility that nothing in the room is quite as simple as it seems.
That is part of the quiet power of set design.
A designer can guide the audience without giving away the story. The environment can create expectations, suggest emotional undercurrents and focus attention. It can make a comedy feel more energetic, a mystery more suspenseful or a dramatic moment more intimate.
In Secret Service, the restaurant establishes a world of sophistication and order so that the production can take great pleasure in disrupting it.
While the finished set belongs to the entire production, its beginnings can be traced back to Morris reading the script and asking what kind of space the story required.
The answer was not simply “an Italian restaurant.” It was a restaurant that could support a spy operation. A restaurant that could feel elegant without becoming untouchable. A restaurant filled with practical opportunities for comedy, tension, entrances and exits.
Most importantly, it needed to feel like a place where a secret might be exchanged over dinner, a plan might unravel beside the wine glasses and something unexpected could walk through the door at any moment.
Through her design, Morris gives the cast of Secret Service a stylish playground in which to create the production’s fast-paced comedy. She also gives audiences their first clue about the story they are about to experience.
The moment they enter the theatre and see Il Glorioso Buco waiting for them, the conversation between the set and the audience has already begun.
It is elegant. It is mysterious. It is polished on the surface.
And somewhere beneath all that style, trouble is already on the menu…..
