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Sean Kenny (theatre designer)

{{Short description|Irish scenic designer, costume designer, lighting designer and director}}

{{EngvarB|date=November 2013}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2025}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Sean Kenny

| image =

| image_size =

| alt =

| caption =

| birth_date = 23 December 1929

| birth_place = Portroe, County Tipperary, Ireland

| death_date = 11 June 1973 (aged 43)

| death_place = London, UK

| nationality = Irish

| occupation = Scenic, costume and lighting designer (theatre and film)

| spouse = Jan Walker
({{abbr|m.|married}} 19??; {{abbr|div.|divorced}} 19??)
{{marriage|Judy Huxtable|1966|1969|end=divorced}}

| partner = Judy Geeson (1969–1973)

| children = 3

| awards = 1963 Tony Award
Best Scenic Designer for the New York production of Oliver!}}

Sean Kenny (23 December 1929 – 11 June 1973){{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1973/06/12/archives/sean-kenny-designer-43-diesset-for-oliver-won-63-tony.html|title=Sean Kenny, Designer, 43, Dies; Set for 'Oliver!' Won '63 Tony|newspaper=The New York Times|date=12 June 1973}} was an Irish theatre and film scenic designer, costume designer, lighting designer and director.

Kenny was the set designer for the musicals of Lionel Bart including Oliver!, Lock Up Your Daughters and Blitz!.

Life

Kenny was born in Portroe, County Tipperary, Ireland in 1929. While he was an architecture student, aged 20, Kenny and three others sailed from Ireland to New York in a 36-foot sailboat, the Ituna, in 1950.{{cite web |url=http://iwn.iwai.ie/v33i4/TransAtlantic.pdf |title=Inland Waterways News }}

Kenny was a contributor to The Establishment, a standup satire and jazz club in London founded by Peter Cook and Nicholas Luard.{{cite web|url=http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw19001/The-Establishment-Club-John-Fortune-John-Bird-Unknown-man-Hazel-Woodvine-Unknown-man-Dudley-Moore-Peter-Cook-Sean-Kenny-Nick-Luard-David-Walsh-Alan-Bennett|title=Portrait – National Portrait Gallery}} In the 1960s, after the workday, Kenny and his staff often made the short trip of a few steps across Manette Street from his design studio into the back door of The Pillars of Hercules.

In 1966, Kenny married model Judy Huxtable. She later described him as "regularly unfaithful", and left him to marry Peter Cook.{{citation needed|date=May 2020}}

Following his divorce, Kenny lived with the actress Judy Geeson until his sudden death from a heart attack and brain haemorrhage at the age of 43. In Stoned by Andrew Loog Oldham, Oldham pays tribute to Kenny as one of the brilliant and original minds working in London theatre in the 1960s, particularly for his work on Lionel Bart's musicals Oliver! and Lock Up Your Daughters.Stoned, Andrew Loog Oldham, Secker & Warburg, 2000, pp. 314-317

In Stoned, Kenny's partner Judy Geeson pays this tribute to him: "Sean had an unusual combination of abilities: he had the creativity to dream up a design. But he also had a brilliant engineer's brain so he didn't only dream it, he knew how to make it."Stoned, Andrew Loog Oldham, Secker & Warburg, 2000, p. 314

Design style

Kenny collaborated with the author and director to make the scenery contribute so significantly to the production that the scenery became a character in the play. Theatre impresario Cameron Mackintosh wrote about Kenny's designs for Oliver!: "A lot of the original 1960 production had been written during rehearsal to accompany the working of Sean Kenny's set, as Oliver! has an episodic story that requires quick and varied changes of locale."[http://www.jewish-theatre.com/visitor/article_display.aspx?articleID=3108 "All About Jewish Theatre – Impresario Cameron Mackintosh: How I got Mr Bean to play Fagin" at jewish-theatre.com]

Peter Roberts wrote in Plays and Players about Kenny's design for the inaugural production of Hamlet for the National Theatre at The Old Vic theatre in 1963: "The scenic shorthand of Sean Kenny's revolving set has all the vigour and unfussy force of O'Toole's performance in the title role...From a practical point of view it enables the director to deploy his cast three-dimensionally, in height as well as across the stage and enables scene changes to be effected rapidly and practically." December 1963.{{cite web |url=http://www.ahds.rhul.ac.uk/ahdscollections/docroot/shakespeare/performancedetails.do?performanceId=11214 |title=Hamlet, Olivier/Kenny, National Theatre, October 1963 |website=ahds.rhul.ac.uk}}

For each production, Kenny invented what he called a "frame", as in framework or scaffold or skeleton. For productions with small budgets, the frame would be stationary and for productions with large budgets the frame would be dynamic, moving. In Oliver! the frame consisted of multi-level scaffolding built on a rotating turntable and two rotating side wagons, properly called ring fragments, that followed the curve of the turntable. In Pickwick, the frame was four multi-level scaffolds on wagons that could move in any direction, like four rolling houses. For Blitz! the frame was four multi-level scaffolds on rolling wagons and two towers that rolled up and down stage, connected by a bridge that raised and lowered while the towers were moving. In each production this frame provided the different spaces, entrances, levels and playing areas needed by the script and by the action.{{cite web |url=http://shelf3d.com/i/Sean%20Kenny%20(theatre%20designer) |title=Sean Kenny (Theatre designer) |access-date=25 April 2014 |publisher=Shelf3D.com}}

"... his influence on British stage design is incalculable. His imagination in the high tech use of modern theatrical technology, paved the way for all the British musical extravaganza which followed."Clive Barnes review of Oliver!, New York Post, 8 January 1963

Projects

Incomplete list:

Awards

  • American Theatre Wing Tony Award{{cite web |url=http://www.tonyawards.com/p/tonys_search?start=0&year=&award=&lname=Sean+Kenny |title=Search Past Tony Awards Winners and Nominees |website=TonyAwards.com}}
  • The American Theatre Wing's Tony Awards 1963 Winner, Best Scenic Designer, Oliver![http://www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=2976 Oliver! profile at IBDb]
  • The American Theatre Wing's Tony Awards 1965 Nomination, Best Scenic Designer, The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd[http://www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=3243 The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd profile at IBDb]

References

{{Reflist}}

External links

  • {{IMDb name|0448618}}
  • {{IBDB name|15296}}
  • [http://catalogue.nal.vam.ac.uk/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=1W2X184P70977.694&profile=nal&uri=full%3D3100001~!630522~!0&booklistformat= Sean Kenny Archive 1959-1973] and other holdings of the National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum
  • [http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw58330/Sean-Kenny 1963 photograph of Kenny in his office on Manette Street in London], held at the National Portrait Gallery, London
  • [http://podcasts.resonancefm.com/archives/6312 MP3 audio file interviews with Sir Noël Coward, Albert Finney, Peter Hall, Sean Kenny, Siobhán McKenna, Harold Pinter, Dame Sybil Thorndike, Kenneth Tynan, Peter Ustinov. Argo, 1962]
  • [http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn3805208 Stage set for the J.C. Williamson production of Oliver! overall view]
  • [http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn3805205 Stage set for the J.C. Williamson production of Oliver!, the undertaker scene]
  • [http://www.bristol.ac.uk/theatrecollection/search/basic_report?form_string=kenny&image_view=Yes&query_image=&SUBMIT=Submit Sean Kenny holdings at the University of Bristol Theatre Collection]
  • [http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/set-designer-sean-kenny-talking-with-author-alun-owen-news-photo/50417266 Getty Images 1964 photograph of Sean Kenny] talking with Alun Owen. In the cartoon on the wall Mr. Kenny satirised his own design for the mechanised stage at the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas, which was nicknamed "The Octopus."

{{TonyAward ScenicDesign}}

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Category:1929 births

Category:1973 deaths

Category:Irish scenic designers

Category:Irish costume designers

Category:Irish theatre designers

Category:Opera designers

Category:Tony Award winners

Category:People from Portroe