The English Stage Company at the Royal Court is world-renowned for having launched a radical phase in English playwriting in the mid-1950s. But equally significant was the concomitant overhaul in British theatre stage design, and William Dudley, who has died aged 78, was one of its outstanding new stars.
The age of painted backcloths and front cloths was now the sole preserve of pantomime, and exquisite costumes and furniture were replaced with rough, raw material and free-standing functional objects. The change, rendering stage design more architectural, more “art school” and certainly more muscularly poetic, had been instigated by Sean Kenny in Oliver! and John Bury at Stratford East and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
