{"id":4213,"date":"2017-01-24T21:30:52","date_gmt":"2017-01-24T21:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bcpdt.org.uk\/news\/?p=4213"},"modified":"2023-05-30T23:58:09","modified_gmt":"2023-05-30T22:58:09","slug":"peter-farmer-obituary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bcpdt.org.uk\/news\/2017\/01\/24\/peter-farmer-obituary\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Farmer obituary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Born in Luton, where his father owned a hat factory, Farmer started his working life as a buyer in Welwyn Stores, a huge shop in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire; there he began experimenting with that miniature stage, the window display.
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\"PoweredThis article titled “Peter Farmer obituary” was written by David Jays, for The Guardian on Friday 20th January 2017 18.26 UTC<\/a><\/p>\n

By the time he came to design an elegantly Edwardian Nutcracker for English National Ballet in 2010, Peter Farmer had refined his guiding principle for the cherished holiday classic. \u201cIt\u2019s about recreating a memory of Christmas you never had but wish you did,\u201d he said. \u201cThe presents, the tree, the family party. A longed-for past.\u201d<\/p>\n

An imaginary past, a delicate enchantment, a wistful exoticism: these were the hallmarks of Farmer\u2019s atmospheric designs, especially for classic ballets. Working for every prestigious British company, as well as the Mariinsky, American Ballet Theatre and others, he gave the revered central works of the repertoire an enticingly dreamy imaginative cast.<\/p>\n

In the process, Farmer, who has died aged 80, became a guardian of unfashionable stage crafts, disdaining model boxes or computer graphics. \u201cIn my generation, stage design was easel-painting-led,\u201d he told the dance critic Ismene Brown in 2006<\/a>. \u201cNow I get so angry because it\u2019s all about making models. I mean, it can be impressive to see a giant helicopter on stage. But if you can do a vision or a bit of magic in a few seconds, it\u2019s terribly impressive, and that\u2019s why I\u2019ve always liked gauzes.\u201d His backcloths and scene paintings were ravishing.<\/p>\n

Farmer\u2019s costume design process was also singular. Big ballets often demand well in excess of 100 costumes (more than 400 for The Nutcracker), but he didn\u2019t make colour sketches in advance. Rather, he would select fabrics in the theatre wardrobe. \u201cThe colour of paint can\u2019t replicate fabric,\u201d he insisted, matching the chosen textiles to his black-and-white drawings. Production staff seem to have loved working with him, perhaps because they felt so closely involved. \u201cIf you get the makers on your side they\u2019ll move heaven and earth,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Australian Ballet staff remember Farmer especially fondly. Each afternoon at 3pm, while working on Madame Butterfly<\/a>, he would announce: \u201cI\u2019m off for a bubble bath and some chocolates.\u201d He had previously met more resistance during a stint with London Contemporary Dance Theatre. \u201cThe girls had big bottoms and wouldn\u2019t wear make-up,\u201d he recalled. \u201cThey said it was all about rehearsal lights and expression of their souls and all that.\u201d Even so he created bracingly modern designs \u2013 steel, silver paint, film and neon \u2013 for works by Robert North and Robert Cohan<\/a>, for whom Stages (1971) ended with its tormented hero striding offstage towards a glowing exit sign. \u201cThe whammy costumes are by Peter Farmer,\u201d enthused the critic Richard Buckle<\/a>. \u201cWow!\u201d<\/p>\n

Giselle, Farmer\u2019s signature ballet, was quite different, moving from the heroine\u2019s sheltered village to the graveyard she haunts in death. He made his name with Peter Wright\u2019s 1966 production in Stuttgart (later reworked for the Royal Ballet touring company), which explored original sources, and Farmer returned to the ballet throughout his career \u2013 notably with the producer Maina Gielgud at Australian Ballet in 1986. Michael Williams described its \u201cwarm autumnal colours, evoking harvest time \u2026 starkly contrasting with the darkness of the swamp, with its chilling colours of dark water and moss.\u201d The veiled, ghostly Wilis later emerge from its waters: \u201ctheir costumes streaked with green,\u201d wrote Sarah Woodcock, \u201clike lichen.\u201d Giselle\u2019s phantom white costume was subtly trimmed with sequins, suggesting the rising dew.<\/p>\n

\"Classic
Classic ballets bloomed under Peter Farmer\u2019s gift for the picturesque.<\/span> Photograph: None<\/span> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Born in Luton, where his father owned a hat factory, Farmer started his working life as a buyer in Welwyn Stores<\/a>, a huge shop in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire; there he began experimenting with that miniature stage, the window display. After training at the local arts college in Luton and on the theatre design course at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, now Central Saint Martins (1955-58), a new career as a painter and, increasingly, stage designer, followed. His debut design was for Jack Carter<\/a>\u2019s Agrionia in 1964, and others for Stuttgart Ballet and London Festival Ballet soon followed.<\/p>\n

Classic ballets bloomed under Farmer\u2019s gift for the picturesque. He summoned rural charm and glowing natural scenes through shimmering paint and gauze. The village square for Copp\u00e9lia (1995, one of several shows for Wright at Birmingham Royal Ballet) offered what one critic called \u201cwood-mushroom and moss-coloured sets and bright embroidered costumes\u201d. More forebodingly, the water in English National Ballet\u2019s Swan Lake (1999) gazed up at rocky crags from which the lovers would meet their deaths. ENB\u2019s Nutcracker came almost four decades after his first, in Houston, by which time he disliked the expected red and gold Nutcracker doll (\u201crather beastly\u201d) and villainous rats (\u201cI don\u2019t like dressing people up as animals\u201d).<\/p>\n

He also worked prolifically in Germany, Hong Kong and the US, including on fruitful collaborations with the choreographers Ben Stevenson and Stanton Welch. In Welch\u2019s Madame Butterfly (Australian Ballet, 1995), Farmer contrasted vulnerable femininity with intransigent, black-clad masculinity. Butterfly was first seen surrounded by gusting fabric banners; women had cherry blossoms in their hair, floating in fragile silks and watercolour-painted chiffons. Vicki Attard, creating the title role, felt that \u201cas the fabrics and designs didn\u2019t weigh me down, it helped me create the ethereal and weightless illusion\u201d.<\/p>\n

Welch last worked with Farmer on a sumptuous La Bayad\u00e8re (2010), describing the Orientalist classic as a \u201cvisually stunning, Bollywood-like production \u2026 like looking through an old picture book from western culture with a view of romanticised India\u201d. With its distant turrets, the \u201cvery painterly look, almost reminiscent of Monet \u2026 gives it dreaminess and romance\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Peter
Peter Farmer was responsible for set and costume design for Winter Dreams at the Royal Opera House, London, October 2010. Farmer had first worked on this production with Kenneth MacMillan in 1991.<\/span> Photograph: Royal Opera House \/ ArenaPAL<\/span> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A rare misstep was Kenneth MacMillan\u2019s 1973 Sleeping Beauty at Covent Garden; hired as a last-minute replacement, Farmer had his designs slated by Buckle: \u201cHe puts every foot wrong.\u201d A more successful partnership with MacMillan was Winter Dreams (1991), a melancholy distillation of Chekhov\u2019s Three Sisters, its characters poised behind a gauze. In later years, Farmer\u2019s sensitive historical imagination won invitations to refresh the original designs for two postwar Royal Ballet treasures \u2013 Robin Ironside\u2019s for Frederick Ashton<\/a>\u2019s Sylvia and Oliver Messel\u2019s Sleeping Beauty.<\/p>\n

Rarely working in straight theatre, he did design several productions starring Si\u00e2n Phillips: The Night of the Iguana (1965), Man and Superman (1966) and A Woman of No Importance (1978), all for the West End or Chichester. He also exhibited his paintings in London and beyond. But it will be ballet for which he is remembered, and for the transporting, satisfying illusion he created. As he considered: \u201cI think my view is about delight, over all.\u201d<\/p>\n

His brother, John, predeceased him.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Peter Farmer, designer, born 3 November 1936; died 1 January 2017<\/p>\n