Working drawing by Michael Annals, showing the elevations of the backings to the set in Michael Frayn's play, Benefactors, made for the production at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, New York, 1985. 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 and costumes for the British premiere of Benefactors, which opened at the Vaudeville Theatre in April 1984. The director Michael Blakemore restaged the production in New York in 1985, using Annals's set designs. The New York production, at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, had costumes designed by John Dunn. Annals's working drawings for the set are all captioned with the name of a different theatre, the smaller John Golden Theatre.