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On Set

"A massive, curved, black-and-gold brick wall encircles some sort of mausoleum. There are black altars and catafalques. Sometimes 100 candles flicker. Black-hooded figures prowl the marble floor. A broken road like a desecrated cemetery surrounds it all. What a visual stunner it is. But it doesn’t actually make too much sense."
Kenneth Hurren, ‘Passion vanishes in a devilish darkness’, The Mail on
Sunday, 23 June 1991

                                                

"Though Prowse’s set is strongly atmospheric, it gives no sense of place and, therefore, no more than a decorative idea of dislocation. The players, along with the passions, are reduced to shades."
Review, Punch, 26 June – 2 July 1991

                                                                                        

 "The spectacle is visually impressive, but when the action begins things start to go wrong. The actors look overwhelmed by the setting […] For instead of assisting the actors, the set flattens them. [...] The play comes across as less funny, and also less touching than it should […] Giovanni’s first scene becomes ridiculous, while his second scene loses its pathos. There were too many mistakes of this kind in this disappointing production."
Emrys Jones, ‘Too Roomy For Intimacies’, Times Literary Supplement, 28 June 1991

                                              

 

The White Devil - National Theatre 1991 © Philip Carter 
 © Photographer Philip Carter