HERBERT WHITTAKER: Designing for the Theatre

Everyman (1932)

Whittaker's first opportunity to work as a designer came in Montreal with the Everyman Players. Led by the Church of the Messiah’s organist George Brewer, the production was an English version of Reinhardt’s Jedermann (Everyman), a play written in the 1400s on morality and obtaining salvation.

At the suggestion of a friend who attended the church, Whittaker submitted designs and in 1932 Everyman began. This production marked the beginning of Whittaker’s long partnership with the Everyman Players first as a costume and light designer and later as their producer.

This costume design for Everyman's mother is from Whittaker's second production of Everyman in 1936.

A Midsummer Night's Dream (1934)

In March of 1934, Whittaker was approached by Charles Rittenhouse to design A Midsummer Night's Dream for West Hill High School. Rittenhouse was both a theatre critic and pioneer for teaching and producing drama in Canada’s educational system. The collaboration began a long and productive friendship between Whittaker and Rittenhouse.

Inspired by the French Post-Impressionist painter Henri Rousseau, this design is simple and inexpensive, providing beauty and function for the production. Whittaker used two tall pillars to create a window, through which the audience could view different panels. Modest black cloth hung on either side of the pillars. The painted panels mimicked Rousseau’s one-point perspective, incorrect proportions and whimsical aesthetics.

The Man With a Load of Mischief (1934)

After the success of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Cecil West, the director of Montreal Repertory Theatre approached Whittaker, asking him to submit designs for Ashley Duke’s The Man With a Load of Mischief, an English play set in a country inn.

Taking inspiration from British cottage architecture, Whittaker designed a set resembling a typical English country residence with a timbered interior and a fireplace.

The Montreal Gazette critic Thomas Archer praised the set design.

The Spanish Miracle (1935)

As designer for the Everyman Players, Whittaker was allowed full artistic control over production. Despite the general rule of anonymous work, it was well known that Whittaker had taken over stage and costume design and critics applauded him for his designs.

Thomas Archer, the theatre critic for The Montreal Gazette commented on the quality of the costumes, “The real triumph lies in the staging and costuming which are often exceedingly beautiful.... These costumes are superb and there is perhaps only one man in the city who could have designed them.”

Romeo and Juliet (1935)

Whittaker joined Charles Rittenhouse again at West Hill High School to design Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Like his design for A Midsummer Night's Dream, the set was inexpensive, and offered a great deal of flexibility.

The set consisted of a slender tower centre stage, serving as a balcony, with a platform and steps. The tower also featured a small nook containing a statue of the Virgin Mary, providing a space for Friar Laurence’s cell.

Whittaker combined vibrant red and deep blue colours, with yellow and amber lighting to provide movement and to divide the stage into defined sections, allowing all of the stage to be used.

A reviewer commented, “What is quite probably the best production of a Shakespeare play done here in the last ten years was seen at West Hill School Thursday...And then imagine a setting impressionist in type, exquisitely coloured and lighted.”

Everyman (1936)

In 1936, Whittaker and the Everyman Players revisited Everyman. Keeping to the historical time in which this religious allegory was written, Whittaker designed the costumes to mimic attire from the 1400s.

Throughout the play, the main character, Everyman, meets characters who help him on his quest to prove he lived a good life. These characters represent ideas like Good Deeds or Knowledge. Whittaker used props and colours to create costumes which represented these abstract ideas.

Taming of the Shrew (1937)

Following the success of Romeo and Juliet, Whittaker teamed with Charles Rittenhouse again at West Hill High School for a large-scale production of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.

Instead of set pieces against a plain backdrop, as seen in Romeo and Juliet, a permanent set was designed to remain in place throughout the play.

To represent the play's setting in Verona, Whittaker designed a traditional Italian landscape with red-roofed buildings against rolling hills with a small grouping of Cypress trees. Smaller set pieces such as chairs and tables would be added and subtracted during scenes, but the landscape would always be visible to the audience. The bright reds and bold colours in the background were mirrored and expanded in the costumes. Petruccio, the male lead, wore a completely red costume. Red was also used as accent colours for the costumes of Gremino and Biondello. Even minor characters were vibrantly coloured. The Haberdasher was outfitted in lime greens and purple and the Widow was dressed extravagantly in black and gold. Heward Stikeman of The McGill Daily wrote, “Herbert Whittaker’s set was a revelation in its freshness of colouring and compositional balance.”

Saint Joan (1938)

“I do believe the 1938 Saint Joan was our best” – Herbert Whittaker

During his time with the Everyman Players Whittaker designed the set and costumes for Saint Joan, based on the life and trial of Joan of Arc.

The play by George Bernard Shaw is based on historical records of her trial and Whittaker’s design focused on historical accuracy. The costumes were based on late Medieval and early Renaissance dress of the 1400s. Brightly coloured tunics, tights, high-waisted gowns and ornate headdresses dominated the stage during scenes in the French court. Costumes for religious figures were done in grey, white and black. Joan of Arc’s final costume, a blue dress with fleur-de-lis and sheer sleeves resembling wings, symbolized her role as a French heroine and her eventual canonization as a saint in 1920.

The Cherry Orchard (1945)

Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard is famous for being difficult to direct. Chekhov wrote the tale as a comedy, but it was first produced as a tragedy. It is said that the dual nature of the play makes it difficult to direct because the emotion and design of the production pull in two different directions. Written as a commentary on the social and economic changes in Russia amongst the aristocrats, their servants, and the rising middle class. The play was based on Chekhov’s childhood.

This production designed and directed by Whittaker was greeted with rave reviews. The critic Thomas Archer wrote, “And this is where hats come off to Mr. Whittaker and the group for their courage in undertaking The Cherry Orchard and for their devotedness in spending, as was obvious, months of painstaking preparation... If there was one man in the Y.M.H.A. Auditorium last night who understood Chekhov and the kind of theatre he imagined, it must have been Mr. Whittaker."

Much Ado About Nothing (1945)

The 1945 production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing marked the start of a style that Whittaker would revisit throughout his career.

Whittaker liked the work of William Poel, a director who encouraged the return to staging Shakespeare on an Elizabethan platform: a thrust stage extending into the auditorium, placing the audience on three sides of the stage.



The stage for this show used a permanent set. An Italian palace was framed by black curtains and two pillars on either side of the stage.

The costumes were Elizabethan and done in lime green, tomato red, burgundy, and orange. The villain of the story, Don John, wore white rather than the traditional black. Sydney Johnson of The Montreal Daily Star told Whittaker years later that in his review, “ I meant to mention the novelty of your permanent set for Much Ado. I was as impressed by its Shakespearean quality as I was by its aesthetic appeal and have never forgotten it. “

The production cost $4,000, which was extremely high. However, the cost was worth it as critics raved about the result. Thomas Archer talked about the perfect balance Whittaker had struck in his designs saying, “This was Globe technique without being self-consciously historical about it.”