THE DUCHESS OF MALFI

// Greenwich Theatre

“Visually, the production is entrancing. The staging is dynamic making wonderful use of Neil Irish's stark set which creates a hauntingly effective space… all beautifully highlighted by Wayne Dowdeswell's simple but creative lighting design.”

WHATONSTAGE.COM

VOLPONE

// Greenwich Theatre

“At first sight Neil Irish's black-walled set, multi-doored and ringed with an upper arcade seems a gloomy setting for a comedy but with a red couch against its chequered floor, warmed by Wayne Dowdeswell's lighting and its modern dress sporting white suits and bursting into clowning colour with Volpone's in-house entertainers, it sparks into life.

Volpone is a man stock-piling treasure, which this production does not put grandly on display but hides away in chests, secret compartments and beneath trap doors where what's thrown in tinkles on what's already sparkling there. We see only its lustre, reflected in golden light.”

Howard Loxton

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

// Longborough Festival Opera

“The set with its honeycomb backdrop was somewhat quirky but supported the action well with some magical lighting effects by Wayne Dowdeswell.”

The Guardian

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

// Longborough Festival Opera

“Since Studer directs, designs and costumes the show, all his ideas are logically integrated and, although at first the set's shiny tubular construction appeared starkly functional, the background of honeycomb lit by Wayne Dowdeswell in relentlessly wild colours gave the cue for details from the natural world conjuring up the gossamer of a fairy domain.”

The Oxford Times

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

// Longborough Festival Opera

“Richard Studer's new production of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream … was a pleasingly enchanting spectacle; the fairies' silver costumes sparkled magically in a modernistic but nonetheless dream-like setting, in which Chinese lanterns rose from the ground to represent trees, lengthy drapes were used to create Tytania's bower, and Wayne Dowdeswell's inspired lighting did some wonderful things to the honeycomb backdrop.”

Opera Now

LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR

// SCOTTISH OPERA , Theatre Royal, Glasgow

“Liz Ascroft's single set of dark pillars, steps and billowing cloudscapes (painstakingly moonlit by Wayne Dowdeswell) is dominated by the shadowy presence of cloaked men with menacing long sticks and by solemn processions of candle-bearing women.”

Hilary Finch, The Times online

EDWARD III

// Gielgud Theatre

“It is often a great spectacle and this owes much to Wayne Dowdeswell's lighting…”

Philip Fisher

SEJANUS: HIS FALL

// RSC, The Swan

“Gregory Doran has orchestrated a totally unified production, dramatic, subtle and many layered. In this he is much helped by Robert Jones's simple and elegant settings, Wayne Dowdeswell's dramatic and strong lighting…”

Rod Dungate

EASTWARD HO!

// Gielgud Theatre

“Wayne Dowdeswell and Martin Slavin design the lighting and sound of a London storm with eye- and ear-splitting realism. The torrents of rain suggested by their device seem to drench the Gielgud stage, a grey-blue gloom descending over the bedraggled survivors of a shipwreck. The doomed Virginian vessel has gone down. All is lost.”

Kevin Quarmby

THE ROMAN ACTOR

// RSC at the Gielgud

“Sir Anthony Sher has great fun playing Domitian, a man who will have his way in all regards except when he attempts to beat the Gods, largely on the basis that he believes that he is one of them… With the assistance of Wayne Dowdeswell's often-sinister lighting he makes a fine devil.”

Philip Fisher

PIAF

// The Watermill

“Praise too must go to Wayne Dowdeswell, for his lighting plot, one moment making a harsh mask of Jo Baird's face as she clawed her way up the microphone, the next softly illuminating the despairing, lonely figure slumped at a table.”

Caroline Franklin

THE THREE MUSKETEERS

// Theatre Royal, York

“…a stern Parisian facade crumbles to become a blasted provincial battlement… Wayne Dowdeswell's sombre, gun-metal lighting oppressively hangs over proceedings like a pall, as silhouettes of angry citizens break through the mist.”

The Guardian

MEDEA

// Longacre, New York

“The lighting by Wayne Dowdeswell is almost brutal in its directness. At one point, a merciless shaft of light actually forces Medea into a corner, even as she is wrestling with her conscience and trying to steel herself to the awful deeds ahead. In what may be the best messenger role ever written, Dan Mullane, motionless in a fierce spotlight, describes ghastly offstage events with frozen horror. He could be responding to a police grilling.”

David Richards, The New York Times

MEDEA

// Longacre, New York

Peter J. Davison has provided an abstract setting. It's a cave of rusted metal panels that play a major role in the production's final moments, a shocking coup de theatre further heightened by the stunning lighting design of Wayne Dowdeswell…

David Rooney, Jeremy Gerard, Markland Taylor, Variety

TITUS ANDRONICUS

// RSC, The Swan

“The bleakness of Isabella Bywater's bare, faintly Japanese, setting and Wayne Dowdeswell's lighting underline the revealing clarity…"

Jstor

THE MIKADO

// D’Oyly Carte - Savoy Theatre

“Tim Goodchild's designs - funnier, more colourful and more sophisticated than you would expect - are complemented with some dramatic lighting by Wayne Dowdeswell.”

PIAF

// The Watermill

“You can almost smell the Gauloises and absinthe of the Left Bank cafés. Wayne Dowdeswell's Stygian illumination turns the Water-mill's tiny stage into a prison of darkness with bars of smoky light.”

Patrick Marmion, London Evening Standard

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY

// Bristol Old Vic

“In this production it's presented by Conor Murphy in a suitably iconic-looking box, floating in blackness and acting as a foil for some pretty clever lighting, by Wayne Dowdeswell.”

LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR

// SCOTTISH OPERA , Theatre Royal, Glasgow

“The set was minimal - a thin pillar, a thick pillar and some ramps and steps. It was cunningly lit by Wayne Dowdeswell.”

BlueDog online