Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2011 - 82

book
big lighting controls had been in England from
the end of WWII. The written description in
the book cannot beat the thrill of watching the
transformation scene sequence at the end of Act
I every night.
Richard recounts in the book spats he had
with two famous technical theatre people of the
previous generation, Fred Bentham in England
and George Izenour in America. Fred wrote in
a letter to The Stage, the English equivalent of
Variety, that the British had nothing to learn
from foreign lighting manufacturers. Richard
was importing German lighting and projection
equipment. But Fred himself had been cloning
German equipment when he worked at GEC
(General Electric Company) before joining
Strand where he cloned his GEC stuff.
George Izenour claimed in a long telegram(!) to the city of Portland, Oregon, that
Theatre Projects proved on the National Theatre
that they knew nothing about theatre consultancy and therefore, by implication, shouldn't have
been engaged for Portland's new performing

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arts center. The National Theatre was Richard
and Richard (Dick) Brett's first theatre consultancy job, so it's great it turned out as well
as it did. Izenour pointed out the drum didn't
work at opening, but neither did the stage lifts
at the opening of the Met in New York, a project
George Izenour was associated with.
But Richard and Dick's introduction of a
deep drum at the National did cause problems
still with us today. Because of the drum, the Olivier open stage is three stories higher than the
proscenium Littleton stage, screwing up forever
front-of-house and backstage circulations.
Along with lighting, Richard's early great
success, with help from colleague Bob Ornbo,
were projections. Projections were key to Richard's employment by London producers such as
Michael Codron, who produced straight plays
and revues. In Codron's memoir Putting It On,
which has just been published in the U.K., the
producer says he "was in the vanguard of the
lighting revolution, fascinated by the work of
Tony Walton and the lighting genius Richard

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Pilbrow (of Theatre Projects fame) with projections." Projections took Richard to America to
implement Tony Walton's design for Hal Prince's
production of A Funny Thing Happened on
the Way to the Forum. After that show Prince,
Tony Walton, and Richard set up a joint venture
to produce Prince's shows in London. This was
because of Prince's bad experience with the
clique who then ran the West End when one of
them closed West Side Story early. Even so, one
of their transfers, Cabaret, suffered the same fate
and was closed early. All of which is recounted in
the book, along with other fascinating theatrical
anecdotes about shows that Richard produced.
But you'll have to buy the book to read them.
Other ventures
The success of Richard's theatrical productions
led him eventually into directing a West End
show himself (a lifelong ambition), making feature films, and making a television series. These
ventures weren't as successful as his other work
and caused much stress along the way, all faithfully chronicled in the book. During this period,
because he was breaking into films and TV,
Richard got a capital injection from Polygram,
a joint promotional venture between German
Siemens and Dutch Philips-unlikely bedfellows.
They owned a third of Theatre Projects stock at
one point. During this time at Theatre Projects,
Richard was producing and lighting, Dick was
involved in the National build, and David Collison's sound department was taking off, as was
Tony Corbett's architectural lighting department. (You can still see Tony's lighting in the
foyer of the National with the special Par36s he
developed for the job.) With Richard out of the
office most of the time, he delegated some of
his managerial and financial functions as group
managing director to outside professionals he
brought into the company, notably John Ball,
former managing director of Rank Strand Electric, who among other things built up Theatre
Project's rental department.
When Richard decided he didn't want
to continue with TV production, Polygram
lost interest, and Richard got venture capitalists VentureLink to replace their investment.
They ended up with around fifty percent of the
company. But this capital injection led Theatre

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2011