"Sweet Charity" made its original debut on Broadway in 1966 with choreography by Bob Fosse and stage and light design by Robert Randolph. Because the musical is set in New York City in the 1960s, MacDevitt favored a profusion of bright oranges, purples and reds, taking most of his cues from Scott Pask's "swinging 60's" set design, as well as the palettes of the artists that populated New York City's art scene at the time such as Mark Rothko, and Pop artists Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. During the number "If My Friends Could See Me Now," a Mark Rothko-inspired, all-red painting seemed to be set ablaze through a clever use of light effects.
Act 1's first big number, "Big Spender," takes place at the Fandango dance hall where Charity works; MacDevitt first used "backlighting," a technique in which the performers are lit from behind, to create an aura of tawdriness around the hall dancers as they entered the stage. As the number built, he switched to directional beams of orange and red light. Once the dancers moved to the front of the stage he used "uplight," directing a beam of light up toward the faces of the dancers to emphasize their garish dance hall personas.
For the number "The Rich Man's Frug" at the Club Pompeii, the upper crust night club where Charity meets Italian star Vittorio Vidal, MacDevitt wanted to create a softer light effect, so he "bounced" light against a reflective surface using wash lights and a color effects wheel to literally wash the stage in light. He mainly used spot luminaires or spot lights on the moving light rig to illuminate the performers.
MacDevitt's light design is part of what makes "Sweet Charity" look less like femme fatale vehicles such as "Cabaret" and "Chicago" and more like "a fable" about Charity's relentless optimism and faith in love, no matter how many times it lets her down.