Set design by Leslie Hurry for John Gabriel Borkman, Duchess Theatre, 1963.

Leslie Hurry (1909-1978) trained at the Royal Academy and during the 1930s became known as a surrealist painter. A one-man show in London in 1942 was seen by the theatre director, Michael Benthall, who recommended Hurry to the dancer and choreographer, Robert Helpmann, then planning a ballet based on Shakespeare's Hamlet. The success of his designs set Hurry on a second career as one of the most distinguished theatre designers of his generation. He designed operas, ballets and plays, notably Swan Lake for the Sadler's Wells Ballet in 1943, a production which stayed in the repertoire for thirty years; Venice Preserv'd for Peter Brook (1953); the Ring Cycle at Covent Garden (1954), and Troilus and Cressida at Stratford for Peter Hall (1960), famous for being staged in a sand pit.

In 1963 Leslie Hurry designed the sets and costumes for John Gabriel Borkman by Henrik Ibsen directed by David Rose at the Duchess Theatre, London. The production, which was lit by Michael Northen, opened on 4 December 1963. This was not a notably successful production, indeed Bernard Levin in the Daily Mail (05/12/1963) complained that ‘everybody appears to be wading through glue both physically and mentally’.

Set for the drawing room Act I of John Gabriel Borkman. The play takes place over a winter evening at the manor house of the Rentheim family in the neighbourhood of Christiana. Leslie Hurry’s indoor sets were described by Philip Hope Wallace in The Guardian (05/12/1963) as ‘working well’ although Bernard Levin asked ‘need Mr. Hurry’s sets...be quite so repulsive, so dark, so utterly hopeless of aspect?’

The scenery was built by Brunskill and Loveday and painted by Alick Johnston.