There’s a fine line between a reoccurring motif and rehashed recycling.

Michael Greif tests the bounds of this difference in two (of the three!) productions he directed on Broadway this season.

Days of Wine and Roses featured and The Notebook features a downstage body of water, running parallel to the lip of the stage, throwing hazy reflections of the water’s ripples onto the walls of their respective sets.

AND, both sets come to a triangular point at the top, echoing the shape of a house or a church.

Oh, and did I mention that they don’t share the same set designer?

Such directorial visual repetition can’t help but spur me to consider the similarities between the shows that would justify such a linkage.

If only Hell’s Kitchen bordered the Hudson River…