"Designer Amy Cartwright had created a multi-faceted set of exposed slatted walls with portraits of the Tsar, odd furniture and a general feeling of disarray." (NWN)
I have just finished designing The Government Inspector at The Watermill Theatre. It is such a unique venue and I always love working there. It's a tiny theatre, placed in the middle of nowhere, but they always create such fantastic productions. Previous shows have transferred to the West End, Broadway and have toured around the world!
I met with the director Seamus Allen for an interview in July and was obviously over the moon when he asked me to design it. I originally trained as a Theatre Designer, but have found myself mostly designing film in recent times. It's such a joy to get stuck into a play design again. The production was for the Theatre's Young Company, which meant that we didn't have the biggest budget in the world to play with, but I am amazed that with hardwork from everyone we managed to get everything exactly how I had envisaged it.
The design premise was that this play is set within a poor town in the middle of a great depression. The authorities were corrupt and the poor were really poor. We decided that the town had once probably been quite rich, then lost it's wealth, then gained a bit of money again, so they started to rennovate the town, then lost the money again. That's a long backstory, but I acheived this by having dusty paint pots lying around as if they had just been left there during the work. Here is the picture that served as my main inspiration fot the set and which triggered my design. I found it here.
I was so happy when I found this picture as it showed just what Seamus and I had been talking about. We were really keen for this show to be really colourful, but quite faded. Although the concept might seem quite serious, it is a comedy afterall!
Here are some of the production stills taken by Philip Tull of the final set.
The costumes were an absolute joy to put together. The wardrobe team at the Watermill were fantastic. After spending about 4 hours trawling through their costume store we amazingly managed to find most of what we needed. The idea behind the costume was that the characters wanted to make themselves look as rich and important as possible, but without the funds to buy any fancy clothes. They have pieced together their outfits the best they could manage, even though a lot of it doesn't quite match. The Governor particular fancies himself as a bit of a military general and has created himself (what he thinks is) a military looking jacket with a plain blazer with lots of medals and badges stuck over it.
All in all the play was a great success. It had a short run of 4 nights, but completely sold out! The audience seemed to love it and laughed the whole way through. I am so pleased to have been involved with this and now I can't wait to design another play again.
