If you walked past the Dorchester in the run up to the most recent coronation, you'd have seen the dramatic draping of swathes of royal blue across the hotel’s balconies that gave the concave façade the appearance of the interior of a theatre, as seen from the stage. A recreation of the decorations that the great set designer Oliver Messel designed for the coronation of the late Queen in 1953, on this occasion they were a tribute to the coronation of King Charles III. Inside the hotel is the famous Oliver Messel Suite, designed the same year as Elizabeth II’s coronation – and reportedly Elizabeth Taylor’s favourite place to stay in London. For Oliver Messel was also one of the greatest interior designers of his time, whose whimsical and wholly original style was in high demand from the jet set of the 1960s and 70s. Thus, as well as working for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and creating the designs for the Royal Ballet’s Sleeping Beauty (it’s been revived and is being performed right now, tickets are still available), he decorated Les Jolies Eaux, Princess Margaret’s house in the Caribbean (it helped that Antony Armstrong-Jones, who became the Earl of Snowdown when he married Princess Margaret, was Messel’s nephew) as well as a host of other homes on the islands of Mustique and Barbados.
Messel is far from the only interior designer to have also worked in the dramatic arts; Nicky Haslam names Felix Harbord who, as well as theatre, consulted for the 1960 film The Grass is Greener starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr – while conceiving interiors for Cecil Beaton at Redditch House, and others. Then there’s Renzo Mongiardino, who was twice nominated for an Academy Award for his work with the legendary director Franco Zefferelli (Zefferelli’s 1968 adaptation of Romeo & Juliet has been in the news recently on account of the lead actors suing Paramount Studios – that aside, it’s an exceptionally beautiful film) and also created interiors for Rudolf Nureyev, Gianni Agnelli, Aristotle Onassis and Lee Radziwill.
In terms of the contemporary, Angus Buchanan of Buchanan Studio trained under Michael Howells, who worked across film, fashion and theatre, and Buchanan Studio offers set design as well as interior design. Emily Dobbs works in theatre production but set up Emily Dobbs Interiors during lockdown, pointing out that it was a natural segue. “Both theatre and an interior are about how you make someone feel,” she explains. Angus agrees: “both are about creating a world with elements of surprise, elements of comfort, and more.” So what transferrable ideas could we – and should we – take from theatre?
All-out trompe l’œil
While the earliest known example of trompe l’œil doesn’t necessarily refer back to theatre (rather, in Ancient Greece a contest took part between two prominent artists, Zeuxis and Parrhasius – one painted grapes so realistic that birds flew down to peck at them, the other an illusionistic curtain so convincing that even his fellow painter tried to draw it to one side) it’s certainly a mainstay of set design, when commitment tends towards all-in. For instance, Messel’s Sleeping Beauty features a vast backdrop of classical columns set against a landscape reminiscent in style of such French 18th century artists as Watteau.
Similarly, while decorative painting is unarguably back in fashion, the designs of those with a theatrical bent are worth looking at because it’s seldom just a ceiling that they adorn. A house Messel decorated in Montecito, California, features a bedroom that he transformed into a Roman tent within a military encampment. Renzo Mongiardino was referred to as the ‘master of illusion’ for his ability to turn any empty room into a fairy-tale palazzo. And at Maison Colbert, Buchanan Studio commissioned Ian Harper to paint an entire room (above) so it appears to be dripping in vines “with eyeballs and other unexpected things peeking between them,” recounts Angus.
Inessential ‘faux’ architectural detail
While yes, we’ve recently seen many plays performed in glass boxes, there are still a happy surfeit of sets that feature inessential architectural frivoles, whose purpose is often to allude to grandeur, and which offer no end of ideas for bringing interest even to the plainest of rooms. When Cecil Beaton first moved into Redditch House (above), “the drawing room was a square room of no especial merit,” detailed this magazine in 1962. Felix Harbord extended it, adding niches as well as white and gold Corinthian-capped columns.
“We’ve got enormous pediment doorways in our house, they’re wildly impractical and unnecessary, but they add drama and excitement,” says Angus. Consider also pedimenting or castellating your kitchen cabinets, and any other joinery. The key is to transmit a sense of theatrical.
Creative budgets – and invention borne of necessity
Theatre is renowned for its pinched budgets, “and if you’re adding faux architectural detail, you don’t have to spend anything near as much as you would on the real thing,” points out Angus. The undoubted master of the wodge was Dennis Severs, who, strictly speaking, was neither set designer nor interior designer, but he did turn his house in Spitalfields into his own version of a performance space, conducting tours akin to immersive theatre (and although Dennis is dead, the house lives on.) One approximation of an 18th century four-poster bed is held together with glue-soaked loo rolls and Polyfilla, another is propped up on pallets from the local fruit and veg market.
Then there’s Nicky Haslam – who cites Felix Harbord as inspiration – and maintains that if you spray anything white it’ll look like porcelain, and proves that point in his London flat. “I’m not afraid of fakes,” he says, explaining the panelling is fake too “painted to look like panels. I copied it from Christian Berard’s salon for Guerlain.” (We’re back to trompe l’œil.)
Mood lighting
“Lighting is vital to a production, because it’s a way of instilling atmosphere,” points out Emily Dobbs – and the same is definitely true of interiors. While once this might have relied on candles (and at Dennis Severs’ house, often still does) these days “different circuits is the answer,” suggests Angus, “along with uplighting, pinpointing, and establishing the electrics in such a way that you can light just a painting, or a bust. You want to be able to highlight what you want people to focus on, just as you would on stage.”
The maximisation of sight-lines
In theatre, sight-lines are all – and sets are built in a way that ensures that viewers can see what they need to. Messel may have reversed that when he dressed the Dorchester as if we’re on the stage looking out, but within the suite he stayed true to the original tenets of set design, with draperies around the bed and elaborate window dressings.
Similarly, Angus Buchanan explains that “in every room, I imagine what the audience will see; I work out the best view in the room, what the view from a chair or sofa will be – and sometimes, I ameliorate that vignette,” he says, offering the shower curtain in his children’s bathroom as an example, which frames whoever is in the bath (above). It is a lesson in thinking about how the colour of one room will look against the colour of another, and the unexpected beauty you can achieve by arranging a charming tableaux on a hall table that you see while sitting in a particular chair in the sitting room.
A sense of ephemerality
“There’s an ephemerality in theatre – quite literally, as sets get packed up and taken away,” points out Emily. “But in that ephemerality is an alchemy – it’s what makes it work.” It’s something that Nicky Haslam agrees with, insisting “rooms shouldn’t look stuck.”
You might read it as a plea to go easy on bespoke fitted furniture, to find a sofa that can’t only fit one way into your sitting room – and certainly there’s an enjoyable frisson to rooms that can be rearranged on whim and given a different look. Buchanan Studio’s latest design, the marble-topped Muse Table, is on casters, seemingly inviting you to wheel it elsewhere for supper, perhaps to park it in front of French windows on a summer evening. “There’s got to be movement in interiors,” says Angus. And, adds Emily, “the magic – in theatre and in interiors, is in the spaces where there’s room for your imagination to take flight, and for a change in direction.” So, even if you do favour fitted furniture, allow for evolvement and spontaneity alongside that – whether by incorporating a new painting, changing the colour of the walls, or maybe even switching bedrooms, just for fun.
Restraint
“When you’re building a set, everything has to matter, because everything is noticed by the audience,” says Emily. “You’re putting across messages at a subliminal level; the set feeds the narrative before the play has even started.” The same goes for interiors, “you’re building it up in layers, but you’ve got to be mindful of how every single thing is going to serve the story,” she says. “And, if you do something wanky, it’s a distraction.”
It’s worth remembering, too, that characters need to be able to move across a set unimpeded by endless twiddly side tables, and then they need to be able to sit on a sofa without having to first move umpteen cushions. Translated, this ultimately comes down to knowing when to stop decorating.
