by William Shakespeare
The Broadway Theatre Studio, Catford, February/March 2005

The director's re interpretation of the plays set it in a condensed version of the period between the first and second world war. The twins, Sebastian and Viola, are separated when a German U-boat attack sinks their ship. The Duke Orsino returns from hospital a war hero. Olivia, left in the charge of he puritanical steward Malvolio, grieves for her brother and father killed in France. All of the back ground for the production was set in a mocked up newsreel footage at the beginning of the play. The action spanning into the hedonism of the jazz age before the clouds of war once again settle at the end.

I reasoned that the houses inhabited by these great families were almost certainly pre war, but I wanted to avoid the obvious route of using Eighteenth Century and Victorian proportions and motifs. The play also contains a number of out-door scenes for which the set would also have to serve. I settled on a design inspired by Charles Rennie Mackintosh's architecture to build an environment that could be out door or in door, but still architecturally daring enough to act as a back drop to the jazz age.