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Simon Higlett
Designer

Theatre includes: designs in 2012 for The Lady from the Sea with Joely Richardson (Rose, Kingston), The Real Thing (English Touring Theatre), The Magic Flute (Scottish Opera) and the musical Wonderful Town (Lowry, Manchester). His most recent credits are the original production of Singin’ in the Rain (Chichester Festival Theatre) and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead directed by Trevor Nunn (Chichester Festival Theatre, transferred to Theatre Royal, Haymarket), Henry lV Parts I & II for Peter Hall and This Happy Breed for Stephen Unwin (Bath), Yes, Prime Minister, When We are Married and The Rivals (all West End), The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Edna O’Brien’s Haunted with Brenda Blethyn (New York, Brits Off Broadway season, also Australia), Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Gate, Dublin), An Ideal Husband and Mrs Warren’s Profession (Shakespeare Theatre, Washington, DC), Hay Fever, Dumb Show and The Three Musketeers (Rose, Kingston) and The Marriage of Figaro (Scottish Opera). Other recent designs: Ronald Harwood’s Collaboration and Taking Sides (Minerva Theatre, Chichester, and West End), the set for A Christmas Carol, Miss Julie and Bedroom Farce (Rose, Kingston), The Merry Wives of Windsor for John Caird (Stockholm), The Winslow Boy with Timothy West, Michael Frayn’s Balmoral (Bath), East Is East (Birmingham Rep), The Grapes of Wrath, The Snow Queen and The Circle (Chichester Festival Theatre), The Glass Menagerie (Manchester Royal Exchange), two Peter Hall productions – A Doll’s House at Bath and Pygmalion at the Old Vic, Brief Lives with Roy Dotrice, Don’t You Leave Me Here (West Yorkshire Playhouse and USA), The Imaginary Invalid (Washington, DC) and The School of Night directed by Bill Alexander (Los Angeles). Amongst Simon’s numerous other credits are An Ideal Husband and The Triumph of Love (Manchester Royal Exchange), Alan Bennett’s Office Suite with Patricia Routledge and Hobson’s Choice with John Savident for Chichester Festival Theatre – as well as Nicholas Nickleby in the West End and on tour in the UK and Canada – The Barber of Seville directed by Thomas Allen, Little Nell directed by Peter Hall (Bath and tour), Amy’s View with Felicity Kendal (Garrick), Hay Fever starring Judi Dench (Haymarket), Enemies directed by Michael Attenborough (Almeida), Darwin in Malibu (Hampstead), The Bargain by Ian Curteis, the UB40 musical Promises and Lies (Birmingham), To Kill a Mockingbird (West Yorkshire Playhouse and tour), the opera Albert Herring (Germany), Anna Karenina (Dublin Gate), Glorious! starring Maureen Lipman, Thomas More (RSC), Shoot The Crow with James Nesbitt and Otherwise Engaged with Richard E Grant (Criterion). Previous designs in London: Blithe Spirit with Penelope Keith, Man and Boy with David Suchet, The Dresser with Nicholas Lyndhurst and Julian Glover, and The Witches (all four running concurrently in the West End), Peter Whelan’s The Earthly Paradise and Sebastian Barry’s Whistling Psyche (Almeida), Neil LaBute’s The Shape of Things (New Ambassadors), Of Mice and Men with Matthew Kelly (Savoy), The Accidental Death of an Anarchist and In a Little World of our Own (Donmar Warehouse), Clubland and The Force of Change (Royal Court), Long Day’s Journey into Night with Jessica Lange, the set for Fascinating Aida’s ‘One Last Flutter’, Home and Beauty, The Accused by and with Jeffrey Archer, the RSC’s A Russian in the Woods (The Pit) and Singer with Antony Sher directed by Terry Hands (Barbican), The Prisoner of Second Avenue with Richard Dreyfuss, The Chiltern Hundreds with Edward Fox, A Song at Twilight, Antony and Cleopatra and The Taming of the Shrew – all three with Vanessa Redgrave, Talking Heads with Maggie Smith, Kean with Derek Jacobi directed by Sam Mendes, Medea with Eileen Atkins, The Magistrate with Ian Richardson, as well as several productions for the New Shakespeare Company in Regent’s Park.

Regional theatre includes: among credits with most major UK theatres, Dead Funny, John Mortimer’s Naked Justice and David Copperfield (TMA Best Design nomination) for West Yorkshire Playhouse, The Happiest Days of Your Life, Yerma, Mrs Warren’s Profession, Peer Gynt, The Count of Monte Cristo and The Brothers Karamazov (Manchester Royal Exchange), The Norman Conquests, The Crucible, A View from the Bridge and Neville’s Island (Birmingham Rep), The Modernists (Crucible, Sheffield), Popcorn (Liverpool), stage versions of Joanna Trollope’s novel Marrying the Mistress and Rosamunde Pilcher’s The Shell Seekers on tour, and, at Chichester, The Barchester Chronicles, Our Betters with Kathleen Turner, Beethoven’s Tenth, The Miser, A Doll’s House and Scenes from a Marriage. 

Opera includes: among worldwide credits, Giulio Cesare, Resurrection, The Barber of Seville, Don Giovanni, La Traviata, La bohème, La Cenerentola, The Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute and Così fan Tutte.

Awards include: two TMA Best Design Awards for Elizabeth Rex (Birmingham Rep) and Three Sisters with Imogen Stubbs (Southampton) and the Helen Hayes Best Design Award for Lady Windermere’s Fan (Shakespeare Theatre, Washington, DC).