Exhibition: THE LINBURY PRIZE FOR STAGE DESIGN 2025, National Theatre

A confession. I tend to adhere to the sentiment that underpins the cruel putdown, “Who sings the scenery on the bus home?” with ‘spectacular’, ‘clever’ or ‘fussy’ just about the only adjectives I use in reviews to describe stage design. That said, it’s critical in creating event theatre for big West End shows and in signalling mood and context in venues of any size. Just keep the blackouts brief please!

But you’ll be disabused of such notions if you select the right staircase at The National Theatre and visit the exhibition that supports The Linbury Prize for Stage Design 2025. 

As the UK’s leading award for emerging theatre design talent, the prize offers a vital launchpad into the world of professional theatre, so it’s critical that the NT gives a platform to showcase these young theatremakers who are attempting to forge a career in a very tricky environment. 

The show itself comprises sketches, photographs, videos and those tiny dolls house scale models that are at once fragile and beautiful, allowing those, like me, who struggle to visualise in three dimensions what we see in one fewer, a proper insight into just how detailed the work can be. 

The twelve recipients reflect both the diversity of the young designers coming through and the critical importance of the UK’s much-maligned specialist arts universities as the engine of renewal for the Creative Industries sector that supports so many jobs and wields so much soft power for our country. 

Even if I cannot get a piece of flat-pack furniture out of the box, still less assemble it, I shall consider sets and costumes with a much beadier eye the next time I sit down in the stalls for a show, big or small. They may not take their bows at the curtain, but the designers have every right to receive their slice of credit for the show we have seen.

The twelve recipients, photographed above with Lady Sainsbury, are Cal Owens (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland), Emily Mahon (Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts), Haiyan Hester Xue 薛海燕 (Royal Welsh College Of Music and Drama), Isaac O'Brien (The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts), James Stibilj (National Institute of Dramatic Art), Kathy Udaondo (London College of Fashion, University of Arts London), Kezi Ferguson (Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama), Miriam Dheva-Aksorn (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art), Willoughby Brow (Wimbledon College of Arts, University of the Arts London), Yi Gao (Wimbledon College of Arts, University of Arts London), Yuhe Zhang (Wimbledon College of Arts), and Zidi Wu (Central Saint Martins, University of Arts London).

The Linbury Prize for Stage Design Exhibition runs in the Lyttleton Lounge at The National Theatre until June 2026. Entry is free.  

Photo Credits: Rory Murphy