The Society of British Theatre Designers

Following the run at Vienna's English Theatre the production transferred to the English Theatre in Frankfurt for a further run of eight weeks. Frankfurt's theatre is far larger and purpose built and presented some difficulties for the transfer of the set. Following a certain amount of misunderstanding and a growing sense of uncertainty from several quarters as far as the false proscenium photographic panels were concerned, as well as the yellow line that linked all the stage elements together, it was also felt that there wasn't a need for me to go to Frankfurt for the technical week, once I'd submitted additional design elements for both main settings. Act One had two corner pieces designed to establish the limits of the room with column pieces (from existing stock items) to emphasise the relative grandeur of the prime ministerial suite. For Act Two I designed a simple extension to the flattage to add a second wall of the room with a suggestion of the doorway into the more modest room in the same hotel. Phil Young realised that, in reality, the 4.5 metre high panels were not substantial (high) enough to sustain the metaphor we'd established in Vienna (of a sense of the world outside the play of working people going about their daily tasks) and cut them. They were dwarfed by the theatre. As the managers of both theatres were resistant to the panels in the first place I didn't ever attempt to broach the possibility of vertical extensions to the panels which would naturally have incurred significant extra cost. The yellow line went pretty soon after, I gather, which I was slightly disappointed by, as I feel the set lost a certain degree of its assurance as a consequence and became rather 'ordinary'. However, Phil tells me he was more than pleased with the outcome, the show was well received and, after all that IS what matters in the end rather than petty design conceits?