Peter Docherty
Set and costume designer, who worked at venues including the Royal Opera House, Apollo Victoria and Wyndham’s Theatre in a career spanning more than half a century
Peter Docherty was admired for clever, concise and often beautiful sets and costumes for ballet, theatre and opera across his 50-year career.
Born in Blackpool, where early exposure to the town’s summer and variety shows stoked an interest in theatre, he studied at the Central School of Art and Design (now Central Saint Martins) and the Slade School of Fine Art.
Aged 16, his first jobs were as a dresser at the Aldwych Theatre and Royal Opera House in London where he first met dancer Ronald Hynd, with whom he later forged a long professional relationship. His first design for Hynd as a choreographer was 1970’s Dvorak Variations for London Festival (now English National) Ballet.
From the start of his design career, Docherty moved effortlessly between ballet and theatre, beginning with short pieces for LFB and Western Theatre (now Scottish) Ballet and the Gershwin brothers’ Lady, Be Good at the Canterbury Marlowe in 1967.
Western Theatre Ballet’s Ephemeron (1968) proved an early success with its memorable coup de théâtre of a late, sudden costume change. The following year, Docherty designed David Storey’s In Celebration, starring Alan Bates and Brian Cox, at London’s Royal Court.
In 1972, he and Hynd made their Royal Ballet debuts with the Frederick Delius-scored In a Summer Garden. The partnership achieved popular success with The Nutcracker at the Royal Festival Hall in 1976, a production that was regularly revived over the next decade.
The pair collaborated on productions as far afield as Vienna, Johannesburg, Santiago and Houston, the latter being where they staged Hynd’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1988. Five years later, Docherty’s designs for ENB’s The Sleeping Beauty were acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum. He designed two other stagings of the ballet for Nicholas Georgiadis and returned to it for Derek Deane at Shanghai Ballet in 2018.
Other theatre work included productions at the Mermaid Theatre, notably 1976’s Side by Side by Sondheim, which transferred to the West End’s Wyndham’s Theatre and Broadway. In 1982, he designed The Sound of Music starring Petula Clark at the Apollo Victoria.
Involvement in opera began with the Danish Royal Opera’s The Magic Flute in 1972.
The Stage hailed his design for Leos Janacek’s The Adventures of Mr Broucek for English National Opera in 1988 “a triumph”.
With Tim White, Docherty co-edited Design for Performance: Diaghilev to the Pet Shop Boys, which is still regarded as a seminal analysis of theatre design.
He taught at Wimbledon College of Arts and was a professor at Central Saint Martins from 1996 until his retirement.
A founding organiser of Action Against Aids, he helped stage one of the first fundraising gala performances to support HIV sufferers at the Adelphi Theatre in 1986.
Peter Docherty was born on June 21, 1944 and died on June 7, aged 75.
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