Costume design by Audrey Cruddas for King John and Queen Elinor in William Shakespeare's play King John, Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 16 April 1957.

Audrey Cruddas (1911-1979) was born in South Africa and came to England in 1923. She studied art at St John's Wood School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools and then began a career as a painter, travelling widely in Europe and North Africa. During World War II illness forced her to rest for a year and during this time, for her own amusement, she produced designs for A Midsummer Night's Dream and Macbeth. On recovering her health she took the designs to London where they were eventually seen by the director, Michael Benthall, who commissioned her to design his production of The White Devil at the Duchess Theatre in 1947. This was the beginning of Audrey Cruddas's theatrical career: she went on to design productions of Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon and the Old Vic, West End plays, and operas. Her designs for Caesar and Cleopatra, which starred Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, won the 1952 Donaldson Award for outstanding achievement in the theatre when the production toured in America.

Cruddas designed the costumes and settings for the Old Vic King John, which was directed by Douglas Seale. To give unity to the action she devised a permanent setting, featuring a multi-functional central battlemented structure that could represent interiors and exteriors and allow the action to flow uninterrupted. Robert Harris, an experienced Shakespearean actor, played John, with Molly Tapper as his mother Elinor. The company was dressed in 13th-century style. Cruddas’s design for John and Elinor is not annotated, but it was published in the Memorial Theatre’s 1957 souvenir booklet along with a reproduction of a handwritten note which gave details of colour and fabric. John’s silver cloak is to be lined in scarlet ‘veering towards orange’, and Elinor’s heavy silk cloak is worn over a velvet dress and a chain mail tunic. The colourful costumes were designed to stand out as the actors moved in pools of light against the sombre background.