Design by Leslie Hurry for a swan-shaped chariot for Juno in Shakespeare's <i>The Tempest,</i> produced by Oliver Neville for the Old Vic Theatre, London, 1962.

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 The Tempest opened on 29 May 1962. The Tatler complained that Hurry's set for The Tempest was deliberately hideous: "it is meant to be ironical, a mockery of the enchanted isle idea." Phillip Hope-Wallace in The Guardian 30 May 1962 described it as a dull "dun-coloured foreshaw."

Although the set was not much admired in the 1962 production of The Tempest the masque in which the goddess Juno (played by Patricia Jessel or Anna Barry) arrived in her swan-shaped chariot made some amends. It included a back-projected rainbow and drifting clouds. The music for the unusually elaborate masque was composed by Michael Tippett.