Productions Past: ROOM

  • Fashion
  • Holiday Acts 1 & 3
  • Holiday Act 2
  • Wait Until Dark
  • Stepping Out
  • A Period of Adjustment
  • A Small Family Business
  • Dangerous Obsession
  • The Complaisant Lover
  • Other People's Money
  • The Flip Side
  • My Giddy Aunt
  • How the Other Half Loves
  • Lettice & Lovage Act 1
  • Lettice & Lovage Act 2
  • Lettice & Lovage Act 3
  • Little Shop of Horrors
  • The Curse of the Flamingo Dancer
  • Leonardo pre West End Act 1
  • Leonardo pre West End Act 2
  • Leonardo
  • Leonardo
  • Leonardo
  • Leonardo
  • Leonardo
  • Leonardo
  • Leonardo
  • Leonardo
  • Leonardo

Here are a few of my productions that I consider to be more architectural: sometimes realistic, sometimes following various theatrical conventions. I was usually simply concerned with serving the play in the best way I could imagine at the time and for a particular audience demographic. I jokingly call them ‘sofa plays‘, as the principal decision is the sofa’s relationship to the doors upstage or entrances and exits elsewhere. That’s not to think any the less of them, either as plays, productions or designs – they satisfied a demand, and although they may have been certified ‘entertainment’, many are thought-provoking and insightful. If nothing else, they take you into an alternative world (perhaps around the corner from your own in some way), not a distraction so much as a journey. For a couple of hours you might have been in another person’s company – to understand something about someone else, and hopefully connect with it. For me as a set designer, they represent some of my most fulfilling hours on the drawing board. The job of a professional stage designer in this context is to make a convincing visual context for the drama, put the audience at their ease so they can absorb the story, appreciate the intentions of the author and swing along with the performers as if they are looking in on friends or foes, but at an imperceptible distance – and to feel, somehow, closer, familiar,… involved.