Rob Howell

Last updated

Robert Stuart Howell is a British costume and set designer. He is primarily known for his work on the London stage. Howell won the Olivier Award for his set design for the musical Matilda the Musical in 2012. He has also designed both scenery and costumes for several Broadway shows, and won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design for Ghost the Musical in 2012.

Contents

Career

After leaving college, Howell worked for two and a half years with the Royal Shakespeare Company as a resident design assistant. He met Matthew Warchus there, who years later asked him whether he would be interested in working on Matilda the Musical. [1]

Howell has designed sets and costumes for numerous plays and musicals in the UK, in London and for Broadway over a 20-year period (based on a 2012 interview). [1] In London, he has designed for Royal National Theatre productions including Buried Child , Chips with Everything , Troilus and Cressida , Battle Royal, and Howard Katz. [2] He has also designed for productions at the Royal Court Theatre, the Donmar Warehouse, the Almeida Theatre, and the Royal Shakespeare Company as well as for regional UK theatres. [2] He was the set and costume designer for the stage musical Lord of the Rings (West End, 2007). [3]

Howell has won fifteen Olivier Awards for Best Set Design. The most recent of these was for his work on the West End production of Matilda the Musical . [4] He has received 2013 Tony Award nominations for his work on the Broadway production of Matilda the Musical, for both Best Scenic Design of a Musical and Best Costume Design of a Musical. [5] His set design for Matilda the Musical was described:

Howell's unique design for Matilda the Musical saw the entire Cambridge theatre, from foyer to stage, transformed into Roald Dahl's imaginative world. The cast climb on giant alphabet soup letters, perform in health and safety defying scenes on wooden spoons and clamber over the imposing thighs of Miss Trunchbull, in her fearsome school... [the] eye-catching and uniquely eccentric design provides a fittingly colourful and exuberant setting. [6]

Howell designed set and costumes for Richard Eyre's 2014 production of Mozart's opera Le nozze di Figaro at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. [7]

In 2015, it was announced he had teamed up with the least creative team from Matilda to design Groundhog Day . [8]

Broadway

Source: Internet Broadway Database [9]

Awards and nominations

YearAwardCategoryWorkResult
2008 Tony Award Best Costume Design of a Play Boeing-Boeing Nominated
2009 Best Scenic Design of Play The Norman Conquests Nominated
Drama Desk Award Outstanding Set Design of a Play Nominated
Outstanding Costume Design Nominated
2012 Tony Award Best Scenic Design of a Musical Ghost the Musical Nominated
Drama Desk Award Outstanding Set Design Won
2013 Tony Award Best Scenic Design of a Musical Matilda the Musical Won
Best Costume Design of a Musical Nominated
Drama Desk Award Outstanding Set Design Won
Outer Critics Circle Award Outstanding Set DesignWon
2017 Tony Award Best Scenic Design of a Musical Groundhogs Day Nominated
2019 Best Scenic Design of a Play The Ferryman Won
Best Costume Design of a Play Won
Outer Critics Circle Award Outstanding Scenic DesignNominated
Outstanding Costume DesignNominated
2020 Tony Award Best Scenic Design of a Play A Christmas Carol Won
Best Costume Design of a Play Won

Related Research Articles

Bob Crowley is a theatre designer, and theatre director. He lives between London, New York and West Cork in the south west of Ireland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matthew Warchus</span> British director and dramatist

Matthew Warchus is an English theatre director, filmmaker and dramaturg. He has been the Artistic Director of London's The Old Vic since September 2015.

Paul Kieve is an English professional illusionist and whose consulting work for both stage and screen has contributed to changing how magical special effects in productions are approached. He is the only illusionist ever to have won a New York Drama Desk award. He created the illusions for the 2014 Kate Bush concert Before the Dawn.

The Norman Conquests is a trilogy of plays written in 1973 by Alan Ayckbourn. Each of the plays depicts the same six characters over the same weekend in a different part of a house. Table Manners is set in the dining room, Living Together in the living room, and Round and Round the Garden in the garden.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rob Ashford</span> American stage director and choreographer

Rob Ashford is an American stage director and choreographer. He is a Tony Award, Olivier Award, Emmy Award, Drama Desk Award, and Outer Critics Circle Award winner.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Caird (director)</span> English theatre director and writer (born 1948)

John Newport Caird is an English stage director and writer of plays, musicals and operas. He is an honorary associate director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, was for many years a regular director with the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain and is the principal guest director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm (Dramaten).

<i>Lord of the Rings</i> (musical) 2006 stage musical

Lord of the Rings is a stage musical with music by A. R. Rahman, Värttinä, and Christopher Nightingale, and lyrics and book by Shaun McKenna and Matthew Warchus, based on the novel of the same name by J. R. R. Tolkien. It is the most prominent of several theatre adaptations of the novel. Set in the world of Middle-earth, the musical tells the tale of a humble hobbit who is asked to play the hero and undertake a treacherous mission to destroy an evil, magic ring without being seduced by its power.

Hugh Vanstone is one of the UK’s foremost lighting designers. He has lit more than 160 productions, working in all spheres of live performance lighting, as well as exhibitions and architectural projects. His career has taken him all over the world and his work has been recognised with many awards, including a Tony Award for his lighting of Matilda the Musical, and the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Lighting Design in 1999, 2001 and 2004.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laurence Olivier Awards</span> English annual theatre awards

The Laurence Olivier Awards, or simply TheOlivier Awards, are presented annually by the Society of London Theatre to recognise excellence in professional theatre in London. The awards were originally known as the Society of West End Theatre Awards, but they were renamed in honour of the British actor of the same name in 1984.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tim Hatley</span>

Tim Hatley is a British set and costume designer for theatre and film. He has won the Tony Award for Best Set Design and Best Costume Design, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design, and the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Set Design.

Anthony Powell was an English costume designer for film and stage. He won three Academy Awards, for Travels with My Aunt (1972), Death on the Nile (1978) and Tess (1979).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paulo Szot</span>

Paulo Szot is a Brazilian operatic baritone singer and actor. He made his opera debut in 1997 and his international career has included performances with the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala di Milano, Opera de Paris, Bayerische Staatsoper, Opera Australia, Liceo de Barcelona, among many others. In 2008, he made his Broadway debut as Emile De Becque in a revival of South Pacific, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical, the Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award and the Theatre World Award. In 2012 he was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award for best actor in a musical, and in 2014 was nominated for the MAC Award for best Celebrity Artist becoming the first Brazilian to receive such honors. In 2022, he originated the role of "Lance" in the hit Broadway musical & Juliet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christopher Oram</span> British theatre set and costume designer

Christopher Oram is a British theatre set and costume designer.

Anthony Ward is a British theatre designer specializing in set and costume design. He studied theatre design at Wimbledon School of Art.

Sonia Friedman is a British West End and Broadway theatre producer. On 27 January 2017, Friedman was named Producer of the Year for the third year running at The Stage Awards, becoming the first person to win the award three times. In 2018, Friedman was featured in "TIME100", Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2018 and was named Broadway Briefing's Show Person of the Year. In 2019, Sonia Friedman Productions was ranked The Stage 's most influential theatre producer in The Stage 100.

<i>Matilda the Musical</i> 2011 musical by Tim Minchin and Dennis Kelly

Roald Dahl's Matilda, also known simply as Matilda and Matilda the Musical, is a musical with music and lyrics by Tim Minchin and a book by Dennis Kelly. It is based on the 1988 novel Matilda by Roald Dahl. The musical's narrative centres on Matilda Wormwood, a precocious five-year-old girl with the gift of telekinesis, who loves reading, overcomes obstacles caused by her family and school, and helps her teacher to reclaim her life. After a twelve-week trial run staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) at Stratford-upon-Avon from November 2010 to January 2011, it received its West End premiere on 24 November 2011 at the Cambridge Theatre and its Broadway premiere on 11 April 2013 at the Shubert Theatre.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter McKintosh</span> British theatre set and costume designer

Peter McKintosh is a British theatre set and costume designer.

Tim Goodchild is a set and costume designer from Great Britain.

Jonathan Richard Driscoll is an English Olivier Award-winning and Tony-nominated theatre projection designer and lighting designer working in the West End and on Broadway. He is a Technical Associate of the National Theatre in London.

<i>Groundhog Day</i> (musical) Musical based on the film of the same name

Groundhog Day is a musical with music and lyrics by Tim Minchin and a book by Danny Rubin. It is based on the 1993 film of the same name, which featured a screenplay co-written by Rubin.

References

  1. 1 2 Beckett, Lynda. "Happy Birthday Matilda!" offscreenmagazine.co.uk, October 1, 2012
  2. 1 2 "Rob Howell, Theatre Credits" lotr.com, accessed May 14, 2013
  3. ↑ "Cast and Creative" lotr.com, accessed May 14, 2013
  4. ↑ "Rob Howell Profile" cft.org.uk
  5. ↑ Gans, Andrew. "Nominations Announced for 67th Annual Tony Awards; 'Kinky Boots' Earns 13 Nominations" Archived 2013-10-21 at the Wayback Machine playbill.com, April 30, 2013
  6. ↑ Amer, Matthew. "Matilda's Howell wins Best Set Design yet again" officiallondontheatre.co.uk, 15 April 2012
  7. ↑ "Season Opens, and the Intrigue Is at Last Onstage – Metropolitan Opera Opens with Le nozze di Figaro by Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times , 23 September 2014
  8. ↑ "Groundhog Day musical: Tim Minchin to write lyrics with Matilda collaborators also attached". independent.co.uk. The Independent. 4 April 2021. Retrieved 16 May 2015.
  9. ↑ Rob Howell at the Internet Broadway Database
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.