Spike
by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman
The Watermill Theatre
Director: Paul Hart
Lighting Designer: Rory Beaton
Photographer: Pamela Raith
Katie Lias’s striking two-tier set design. In one scene, Milligan (John Dalgleish) is in an office – the room suggested by a Milliganish doodled backdrop – discussing the show with a pompous BBC executive… in a flash what seemed to be a solid wall above their heads becomes a window onto no-man’s-land, all smoke and rubble. Later, as Milligan wrestles against overwhelming deadlines, that hill of blasted earth is replaced by a heap of scrunched-up pages.
- The Telegraph
Designer Katie Lias artfully conjures a BBC sound studio post-war… the whole edifice of the Goons comedy was built on his writing (as cleverly demonstrated in Lias' design, with an untidy pile of discarded paper growing above the studio ceiling)
- WhatsOnStage
Designer Katie Lias’ deceptively simple set captures the practical austerity of a 1950s radio studio, while hiding extra spaces behind gauzes… it adds another layer of comedy and invention to the production.
- The Stage
The intimate Watermill is an appropriate setting for Katie Lias’s retro radio-studio set
- The Times
… melt with nostalgia at Katie Lias’ artful set of old tape spools and microphones
- Libby Purves, Theatre Cat
The whole production is set in witty and cleverly designed set by Katie Lias which turns the BBC radio recording studio into the other locations with a swish of a curtain and some simply drawn backcloths in the style of Spike’s own cartoons and uses hidden doors and gauzes to add to the illusions of madness or the memories of war disturbing him
- Pocket Size Theatre
As always, the production values at the Watermill are second to none. Attention to detail in the set and costumes by Katie Lias transport us to early 1950’s Britain
- West End Best Friend
