Preliminary set design by Leslie Hurry for Graham Greene's The Living Room, directed by Peter Glenville at Wyndham's Theatre, London, 1953.

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.

This production of Graham Greene's The Living Roomopened at Wyndham’s Theatre, London on 16 April 1953. The set was built by Brunskill and Loveday and painted by Alick Johnstone. Michael Northern assisted with technical advice. This disturbing play had a single set described in Theatre World May 1953 as ‘grimly effective décor, which most cleverly sets the mood for the play’. The critic J. W Lambert confirmed this claiming that ‘Leslie Hurry’s set once for all fixes the tone of death-in-life, stuffiness, and careful improvisation; a tall narrow window reminds us always of church’. Later Ray Ingram wrote that ‘To evoke the disturbing oddness required by Graham Green’s Living Room, he [Hurry] subtly distorted the proportions of the suburban architecture and employed gauze for the walls, one of the first designers to use this technique on the London stage.’ The production was photographed by Angus McBean.