The Infernal Machine, by the French writer Jean Cocteau, is an adaptation of the Oedipus myth from the Greek dramatist Sophocles. While Sophocles’s theme is that man can not escape his own fate, Cocteau took the characters off their pedestals and wittily humanized them, turning Oedipus into a naïve, arrogant puppet with whom the gods play, not a man in charge of his own destiny.

Messel designed costumes, sets and masks for the play when it was produced at the Arts Theatre in London in 1940. It featured Jeanne de Casalis as Jocasta, Leueen McGrath as the Sphinx, and Peter Glenville as Oedipus. Messel’s basic designs were classical, but updated in materials, like this leather tunic decorated in arabesques, circles, crescents and stars - a graphic, bold, and simple design reflecting Cocteau's own graphic style.

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.