On Set Design in the The Trial, Young Vic.

When you put a conveyer belt on the stage, people often say things like; Why did they do that? I think the more appropriate question is; Why wouldn't you do that? English audiences are very suspicious of set design, they feel it is too tricksy, an add on, a bit of frou frou. I heard several complaints as I left the theatre after watching 'The Trial' at the Young Vic (all, I observed, from middle aged men and women, though don't ask me to reflect on this) about the set and the costumes. 'What was the point?', 'Too weird', 'What's wrong with just normal theatre and normal staging?' Were there similar comments being made after the introduction of the revolving stage in Les Miserable? I don't know, I wasn't there, but maybe.



I once met the show's designer, Miriam Beuther, in the development process of Wild Swans. She appeared focused on her job, somewhat shy, the opposite of showy or egotistical. So I don't buy the idea that she is not being sensitive to the text with her designs, tagging on her personal interpretation regardless. What I like most about her work is her focus on the transition between scenes, using them as a metaphor rather than pretending they aren't there. It is why, I believe, her designs lend themselves so well to Mike Bartlett's scripts, with their multiple locations and giant casts. In Wild Swans, her and Sacha Wares purposefully made the scene changes more elaborate in order to reflect the pace of the rapid change within China's history. A similar sense of impending doom and forward momentum is required here. Josef K steps on the treadmill and the pace is steady, he has one destination; death.

The look of the set was something like an Ikea flatpack. The seats had all been clad in plywood and  and the costumes had that sort of eccentric feel that those, Ikea Schlomp adverts in the nineties had. The designs and characterisation were bold, drawn with wide brush strokes, that together with the plywood gave everything a sort of lighthearted feel. I can see that this may jar with with dark existentialism but it doesn't strike me as entirely inappropriate. In some ways the existentialist dilemma is pretty straightforward. We know where this is going and onwards it does. Not a lot you can do about it.

I don't know, no one else seems to like it, maybe it was because I saw the Bakkhai the night before and found the design so unimaginative, maybe it was because Rory Kinnear was so good. Although other people didn't seem to like that either. Maybe I just haven't seen anything decent in ages.