The Death of a Black Man // Hampstead Theatre 2021
by Alfred Fagon
director: Dawn Walton
lighting designer: Johanna Town
composer: Duramaney Kamara
sound designer: Richard Hammarton
movement director: Rachael Nanyonjo
photographer: Marc Brenner
★★★★★ “Simon Kenny's set is superb, working seamlessly with the time and tone of the play throughout. The flat itself is every inch opulent 1970s fashion - panelled wooden furniture, plush carpets and beautiful wallpaper cocoon the characters as the champagne continues to flow in the first act… However, all vibrance is drained from the picture. The set transforms into something skeletal and the decision to open the stage curtains further is an absolute masterstroke. The flat looks like a floating prison, and it is impossible not to feel that even if Jackie were to escape, she'd fall to her death trying. This is an urgent and brilliant production.” Whats On Stage
★★★★ The Independent
“Simon Kenny’s design is a delight, starting off with a snazzy sherbet-and-coral living room, which, in the second half, is stripped away to reveal the skeleton of the stage behind it… A sharp distillation of the piece’s ideas, Kenny’s set presents a flashy, irresistibly stylish exterior that is stripped away to reveal the cavernous nothingness underneath.” The Stage
“Simon Kenny’s set design – delightful in its period detail – is stripped of its backdrop in the second half to reveal the stage’s innards, as the play travels towards barbarism.“ The Guardian
“The production spirals from a spikily heightened reality into something much more surreal with great design work from Simon Kenny.” Financial Times
“A fierce production… this play’s increasingly nihilistic landscape is something we cannot help but understand.’ New York Times