Great Britain’s leading theatre designer from the early 1930s to the mid 1950s, Oliver Messel (1904-1978) won international acclaim for his lavish, painterly and poetic designs informed by period styles. His work spans ballet, drama, film, musical, opera and revue. Messel’s traditional style of theatre design became unfashionable from the mid 1950s onwards, and he increasingly concentrated on painting, interior and textile design, including designing luxury homes in the Caribbean.

Christopher Fry’s verse play The Dark is Light Enough (1954) is set in the Countess Rosmarin Ostenburg’s country house at the time of the Hungarian rebellion against the Austrians, 1848-1850. The dying Countess with pacifist principles selflessly harbours Gettner, her former son-in-law and deserter from the Hungarian army. The play received mixed reviews following its transference to Broadway, New York in 1955. Critics praised the acting and sets but objected to the play’s obscure meaning.

Messel's first step in stage design was to create a set story board. The top sketch shows the Countess’s lavish drawing room, the setting for Acts I and III. The staircase on the left is a key part of the final scene, when the Countess descends the staircase majestically for the last time. The sketch below shows the setting for Act II: Gettner hides from Hungarian soldiers in the Countess’s stables.