Working drawing by Michael Annals, showing details of the Central Display Stand in Michael Frayn's play, Make or Break, Eisenhower Theatre, Kennedy Center, Washington DC, 1983. Dyeline.

Michael Annals (1938-1990) trained at Hornsey College of Art and began his career designing sets and costumes for the Old Vic. In 1963 the newly formed National Theatre Company moved into the Old Vic and Annals joined them, having his first major success with his designs for Peter Shaffer's historical epic, The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1964). He went on to have an international career, designing for the theatre and for ballet, opera and film, but is most closely associated with the National Theatre, where he created notable settings for a range of productions, including O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night starring Laurence Olivier, Hecht and MacArthur's The Front Page and Shaw's Heartbreak House. Annals frequently worked in the United States and was Associate Professor of Scenic Design at Yale in 1966-1967. In 1984 he gave up the stage and took up photography and illustration.

Michael Annals designed the sets for the British premiere of Make or Break which opened at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, in March 1980 and, after a short run there, transferred to the Haymarket Theatre in the West End. The director Michael Blakemore restaged the production in the USA in 1983, with Annals designing both sets and costumes. The American production opened at the Kennedy Center, Washington DC, in April 1983, in what was intended as a pre-Broadway try out, but press reviews were not favourable and the show closed after its Washington run.