Set & Costume Designer

Frankie Bradshaw

Selected credits

  • MacbethLiverpool/ Edinburgh/ London/ Washington DC
  • Dear Octopus/ Blues for an Alabama SkyLyttelton Theatre/ National Theatre
  • BarcelonaDuke of York's
  • Clyde's Donmar Warehouse
  • Pins & Needles/ RetrogradeKiln Theatre
  • The Talent Second Name Productions/ Smoking Gun Films
  • ITCHOpera Holland Park
  • Mad HouseAmbassadors' Theatre/ West End
  • Beautiful: The Carole King MusicalLeicester Curve/ Royal Theatre Bath/ UK Tour
  • SweatWest End/Gielgud Theatre/Donmar Warehouse

About

Frankie is an award-winning set and costume designer based in London.  She has worked across the UK in the West End and in venues including the National Theatre, the Donmar Warehouse, the Young Vic, the Royal Exchange in Manchester and Nottingham Playhouse. 

Frankie was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Costume Design for her work on Blues For an Alabama Sky at the National Theatre. She won the Best Creative West End Debut at the Stage Debut Awards 2019 jointly with director Lynette Linton for SweatShe was winner of the Off West-End Award for Best Set Design in 2016 for Adding Machine (Finborough Theatre) and was nominated for the Off West-End Award for Best Set Design in 2017 for Assata Taught Me (Gate Theatre).

Frankie’s most recent designs include Macbeth starring Ralph Fiennes and Indina Varma, where she transformed warehouse spaces into theatrical stages in Liverpool, Edinburgh, London and Washington DC, Barcelona starring Lily Collins (Duke of York’s), Dear Octopus (Lyttelton, National Theatre)Clyde’s directed by Lynette Linton (Donmar Warehouse),  ITCH (Opera Holland Park),  Starter for Ten: The Musical (Bristol Old Vic), Pins & NeedlesRetrograde (Kiln Theatre), Blues for an Alabama Sky (Lyttelton/ National Theatre- Nominated for Best Costume Design, Oliver Awards 2023), Mad House (Ambassador’s Theatre/West End), Unexpected Twist (Royal & Derngate/UK Tour) and Local Hero (Chichester Festival Theatre, Minerva Stage).

Featured work

Macbeth

Liverpool/ Edinburgh/ London/ Washington DC
Starring Ralph Fiennes and Indina Varma
Adapted by Emily Burns
Directed by Simon Godwin
Set & Costume Design by Frankie Bradshaw
Lighting Design by Jai Morjaria
Sound Design by Christopher Shutt

‘Frankie Bradshaw’s enveloping set design is the star of the show’

‘Frankie Bradshaw – rising star of stage design – has created a wasteland of toppled telegraph poles, chunks of masonry, a half-blasted tree, a burned-out car.’
★★★★ The Guardian

Blues for an Alabama Sky

Lyttelton Theatre, National Theatre
Directed by Lynette Lynton

NOMINATED FOR BEST COSTUME DESIGN, OLIVIER AWARDS 2023

‘Frankie Bradshaw’s tenement-block design is busy with multiple lives – several rooms and the street always on show. Bradshaw’s hand is also important in the tremendous clothes (costumes is too inert a designation) that suggest aspiration as well as habit, and give a lovely texture to the play’s movement…I have rarely seen costumes used so expressively. They are the fabric equivalent of the songs that break out beautifully through the evening.’
★★★★ The Guardian 

Dear Octopus

Lyttelton Theatre, National Theatre
Directed by Emily Burns
Set & Costume Design by Frankie Bradshaw
Lighting Design by Oliver Fenwick
Sound Design by Tingying Dong

‘Frankie Bradshaw’s ravishing revolving set is almost another character.’
★★★★ The Telegraph

‘This glorious revival of Dodie Smith’s interwar family drama is a visual and emotional feast.’
★★★★ The Guardian

 

Barcelona

Duke of York's Theatre
Starring Lily Collins and Álvaro Morte
Writer: Bess Wohl
Director: Lynette Linton
Set & Costume Design: Frankie Bradshaw
Lighting Design: Jai Morjaria
Composition & Sound Design: Duramaney Kamara & Xana
Video Design: Gino Ricardo Green

Pins & Needles

Kiln Theatre
Written by Rob Drummond
Directed by Amit Sharma
Set & Costume Design by Frankie Bradshaw
Lighting Design by Rory Beaton
Sound Design by Jasmin Kent Rodgman

★★★★ The Telegraph
★★★★ BroadwayWorld

The Talent

Short Film (2023)
Second Name Productions in association with Smoking Gun Films
Written & Directed by Thomas May Bailey
Produced by Ellen Spence and Emma D’Arcy
Director of Photography Anna MacDonald
Production + Costume Design by Frankie Bradshaw
Music by Tom Foskett-Barnes

On the set of a luxury car commercial, an overlooked assistant seizes his chance to get noticed by the star.

Starring Emma D’Arcy and Leo Suter, The Talent is a tense exploration of masculinity, ambition and desire.

Clydes

Donmar Warehouse
Directed by Lynette Linton
Set and Costume Design by Frankie Bradshaw
Lighting Design by Oliver Fenwick
Sound Design by George Dennis

‘Linton’s production boasts a terrific design from Bradshaw and a set of perfect performances from its five-strong cast. Nottage, Linton and Bradshaw have done it again. Their sandwich-shop-set show is scrumptious.’
★★★★ The Stage
★★★★ The Times
★★★★ The Guardian
★★★★ WhatsOnStage

ITCH

New production and World Premiere by Opera Holland Park
Opera by Jonathan Dove
Directed by Stephen Carlow
Set & Costume Design by Frankie Bradshaw
Lighting Design by Jake Wiltshire
Projection Design by Jack Henry James Fox

‘A good amount of the production’s impact comes from Frankie Bradshaw’s set, a Tetris-like structure of stairs and platforms resembling the “castle” of the periodic table, which lights up either as individual blocks or as a whole backdrop.’
★★★★ The Guardian

RETROGRADE

Kiln Theatre
Written by Ryan Calais Cameron
Directed by Amit Sharma
Set & Costume Design by Frankie Bradshaw
Lighting Design by Amy Mae
Sound Design by Beth Duke

‘Frankie Bradshaw’s design nails the period’
★★★★ The Guardian
★★★★ The Telegraph
★★★★ The Stage
★★★★ The Evening Standard
★★★★ The Independent 

Mad House

Ambassadors Theatre/ West End
Written by Theresa Rebeck
Directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel
Set Design by Frankie Bradshaw
Costume Design by Tilly Grimes
Lighting Design by Prema Mehta

‘Frankie Bradshaw’s grand naturalistic set feels convincingly lived in – a creaky house packed with details and piled-up props’  The Stage 

‘Among the finest work currently on in the West End’
★★★★★ British Theatre 

★★★★★ The Evening Standard 

Beautiful- The Carol King Musical

Leicester Curve Theatre/ Royal Theatre Bath/ UK Tour
Book: Douglas McGrath adapted by Sarah Travis
Direction: Nikolai Foster
Set: Frankie Bradshaw
Costume: Edd Lindley
Lighting: Ben Cracknell
Sound: Tom Marshal
Photos by Ellie Kurtz

House of Ife

Bush Theatre
Direction: Lynette Linton
Set and Costume: Frankie Bradshaw
Lighting: Jai Morjaria
Sound: Duramaney Kamara
Movement: Kane Husbands
Associate Direction: Monaé Robinson
Photos by Marc Brenner

The Long Song

Chichester Festival Theatre
Adapted for stage from Andrea Levy's novel by Suhayla El Bushra
Directed by Charlotte Gwinner
Set and Costume Design: Frankie Bradshaw
Lighting Design: Mark Doubleday
Video Design: Dick Straker
Composition and Musical Direction: Michael Henry
Sound Design: Helen SkieraMovement: Angela Gasparetto
Photos by Manuel Harlan

‘Frankie Bradshaw’s set is visually back-loaded with a thick, high line of sugar canes that Mark Doubleday’s lighting spectacularly subjects to sunrise, sunset, night, fire and rainstorm.’ 
★★★★ The Guardian

Beauty & The Beast

Rose Theatre, Kingston
Adapted for stage by Ciaran McConville, with music and lyrics by Eamonn O'Dwyer
Directed by: Lucy Morrell
Set Design: Frankie Bradshaw
Costume Design: Peter Todd
Lighting Design: Emma Chapman
Sound Design: George Dennis
Choreography: Aimee Leigh
Photos by The Other Richard and Csilla Horváth

‘ Frankie Bradshaw’s beautiful set moves from a children’s attic to a mountain-top, to a picture perfect garden.’
★★★★ Broadway World

Sweat

Gielgud Theatre, Donmar Warehouse
Written by Lynn Nottage
Director: Lynette Linton
Lighting: Oliver Fenwick
Sound: George Dennis
​Photos by Johan Persson

Best Creative West End Debut at the Stage Debut awards 2019

‘Frankie Bradshaw’s design is first monumental and decrepit, then bright and detailed. An industrial wasteland – rusty pipes the breadth of human torsos – gives way to a bright bar with a neon sign in cursive writing, plastic tomatoes for ketchup.’
★★★★★ Observer 

 

Two Trains Running

Royal and Derngate/ETT UK Tour
Director: Nancy Medina
Lighting: Amy Mae
Sound: Ed Lewis
Movement: Rachael Nanyonjo
Photos by Manuel Harlan

‘ An underlying sense of menace and instability is viscerally encapsulated by Frankie Bradshaw’s set…. above it a wrecking ball suspended from a chain seems caught at the moment of mid-swing, between the blow that has just destroyed and the blow that is yet to come.’
★★★★ The Guardian

Assata Taught Me

Gate Theatre
Written by Kalungi Ssebandeke
Director: Lynette Linton
Lighting: Jack Weir
Sound: Richard Hammarton
Scenic Art: Richard Nutbourne
​Photos by Ikin Yum

‘the design is a little miracle: Frankie Bradshaw conjures old Havana with a tiled floor, beaten copper walls and a crumbling ceiling.’
The Guardian

‘Frankie Bradshaw’s design is utterly transformative… allowing the audience to be transported into the tiny world of Assata’s front room, whilst being exposed to the huge world that exists outside it’
★★★★★ Theatre Bubble

Skellig

Nottingham Playhouse
Written by David Almond
Directed by Lisa Blair
Lighting Design by Alexandra Stafford
Composed/Sound Design by Tom Attwood
Movement Directed by Chi-San Howard
Photos by Marc Brenner

‘The set, by Frankie Bradshaw, is a child’s dream: it inspires you to want to run up and explore, not sit back and sigh, as adults do, about having to clean it up.’
★★★★ The Times 

For more information or to check availability

0207 2871441