about

Simon is a UK based set and costume designer working in theatre, opera and live performance. He trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama. His work on the acclaimed off-Broadway ‘Pie Shop’ production of Sweeney Todd was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design of a Musical. His designs for Black Men Walking were selected to represent the UK at the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and his designs for The Wiz are in the permanent collection at the V&A Museum.

Current and forthcoming projects include The Lord of the Rings: A Musical Tale (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre); Brassed Off (Theatre By The Lake/Bolton Octagon/Stephen Joseph Theatre); Romeo & Juliet (Belgrade/Bristol Old Vic/ Hackney Empire); Enthoven Unboxed - a display celebrating the centenary of the Theatre & Performance Collection at the V&A; and Our Mighty Groove (Uchenna Dance) to open the new Sadlers Wells East Theatre.

Musical theatre includes The Lord of the Rings: A Musical Tale, Whistle Down The Wind (Watermill); Rehab (NEON Piccadilly); The Light in the Piazza (Royal Academy of Music); The Lion (Southwark Playhouse, Arizona Theatre Company); The Wiz (Hope Mill Theatre); Dave Malloy’s Ghost Quartet (Boulevard Theatre); Assassins (Watermill/Nottingham Playhouse); Cabaret (English Theatre Frankfurt/Deutsches Theater Munich); Sweeney Todd (Harrington’s Pie & Mash Shop, West End and off-Broadway, Tooting Arts Club); Guy Chambers’ folk opera adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant (Royal & Derngate Northampton, West End); Kander and Ebb’s The World Goes Round (Stephen Joseph Theatre); Billy The Kid (NYMT/Curve); and Saturday Night Fever (Theatre Royal Bath, UK tour).

Theatre includes The Real and Imagined History of The Elephant Man (Nottingham Playhouse); One Last Push (Salisbury Playhouse); Murder in the Dark (Original Theatre/UK tour); The Wind in the Willows (Shakespeare North Playhouse); Duet For One (Orange Tree); Family Tree (ATC, UK tour); Charlotte & Theodore (Theatre Royal Bath); The Art of Illusion, The Death of a Black Man (Hampstead); Blue/Orange (Theatre Royal Bath, Royal & Derngate Northampton); Samuel Beckett’s Footfalls & Rockaby (Jermyn Street); Nothello (Belgrade/Coventry City of Culture); Antigone, Peter Pan (Mercury Colchester); The Gift, Black Men Walking, Princess & The Hustler (Eclipse, UK tours); stage adaptations of Jackie Kay’s Red Dust Road (National Theatre of Scotland/Edinburgh International Festival), Alex Wheatle’s Crongton Knights and Malorie Blackman’s Noughts & Crosses (both Pilot, UK tours), Louis Sachar’s Holes (Nottingham Playhouse and UK tour) and Karen Blixen’s Babette’s Feast (Print Room); Giraffes Can’t Dance (Curve/Rose/Simon Friend); Macbeth (Stafford Shakespeare Festival); Broken Glass (Watford Palace); Wind in the Willows (Sherman); a national tour of Driving Miss Daisy with Siân Phillips (Theatre Royal Bath); Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare’s Globe); Platinum (Hampstead); Barbarians in the vacant Central St Martin’s building in Soho (Tooting Arts Club); Sleeping Beauty, The Ladykillers, Sherlock’s Last Case, Sleuth (Watermill); The Children, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Venus in Fur, The Collector (English Theatre Frankfurt); a major revival of Martin Sherman's Rose with Dame Janet Suzman (HOME); Fallen Angels (Salisbury Playhouse); The Light of Heart, Ghosts (Theatr Clwyd); two American Seasons at the Ustinov Studio Bath, including In The Next Room or the vibrator play (also St James), 4000 Miles (also Print Room), Fifty Words (also Arcola), Red Light Winter, In A Garden; Absent Friends, Entertaining Mr Sloane (London Classic Theatre, UK tours); ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas, a new devised piece for small children (Unicorn); Island (National Theatre & tour); and Border Force, an installation/performance/club event for Duckie.

Other theatre includes the UK premiere of Noel Coward’s This Was A Man, and revivals of previously banned Young Woodley and Tea and Sympathy (Finborough); Purple Heart (Gate); The Machine Gunners, Run! (Polka); The Belle’s Stratagem, Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me, The Busy Body, Antigone, Feathers in the Snow (Southwark Playhouse); Hamlet (Young Vic); The Mountaintop (Derby Theatre); There’s Only One Wayne Matthews (Sheffield Crucible Studio); Palace of the End, Riff Raff (Arcola); Pedestrian, a new play for one man and a goldfish (Bristol Old Vic & UK tour); Measure For Measure, The Comedy of Errors (Cambridge Arts Theatre); Tales from the Bar of Lost Souls (imitating the dog/British Council, National Theatre of Greece & UK tour); The School for Scandal (Park Theatre); Good Grief (UK tour, Theatre Royal Bath); Seven Jewish Children (Hackney Empire); Michael X (Tabernacle); The Veiled Screen, True or Falsetto? (Drill Hall & international tours); Twelve Angry Men (Tricycle); three national and international tours of new plays for British-Asian company Rifco Arts; and as Associate Designer, Double Feature - a season of four new plays in a bespoke pop-up venue in the National Theatre Paintframe.

Opera includes A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Le Nozze di Figaro (Nevill Holt Opera); Vivienne (Royal Opera House, Linbury); The Cunning Little Vixen, The Prodigal Son, The Homecoming, Háry János, Orlando (Ryedale Festival); Carmen (Prison Choir Project); A Voice of One Delight (Tête-à-Tête); Albert Herring (Surrey Opera; Carmen (Hampstead Garden Opera); A Night at the Opera (London Palladium & UK tour).

He works regularly with drama and theatre production students as a designer, project leader and visiting lecturer. Productions include Against, Suddenly Last Summer, The Workroom (RADA); Angels in America, Woyzeck, Machinal (Central School of Speech and Drama); Legally Blonde, Evita, Roberto Zucco (Arts Ed); Caresses, In Flame (Manchester Metropolitan University); a promenade production of Watership Down (Oxford School of Drama at the Botanic Garden, Oxford); and a series of devised projects for Creative Partnerships.