Peter Rice: Set and costume designer whose work was rooted in the painterly tradition of decorative elegance

Rice was a child of the Raj, born in Simla and then educated in Surrey

For over six decades, whenever Peter Rice’s name was attached to a project for the theatre, opera or ballet, producers and production managers would relax, sure in the knowledge that his set designs (he usually also designed the costumes) would be distinguished and delivered with unfailing good humour on schedule and, vitally in commercial and subsidised theatre alike, on budget

Having made his name in the 1950s when sharp, fast-moving intimate revue still flourished before Beyond the Fringe sounded its death-knell alongside undemanding light comedy on Shaftesbury Avenue, Rice became stamped primarily as a designer of choice in the Cecil Beaton/Oliver Messel painterly tradition of decorative elegance.

Indeed his eye for colour – stimulating in the pallid grey of post-war austerity – and his technical ingenuity suited him to the demands of quick-change revue and to frivols from established comedy writers such as Hugh and Margaret Williams or Ray Cooney; however, much of his opera work and some remarkable designs for off-West End venues such as Greenwich Theatre in the 1970s and 1980s saw some very different aspects of a remarkably versatile talent.

Rice was a child of the Raj, born in Simla and then educated in Surrey (St Dunstan’s, Reigate) where his precocious passion for the decorative arts flourished, leading him to train as a painter at the Royal College of Art. Drawn always to the theatre, his first professional project was at the adventurous little Watergate Theatre (often a flourishing revue house) on the intriguingly-titled (but, according to Rice, disappointingly tame) play Sex and Seraphim (1951).

Opera also involved him from early in his career, beginning with an elegant and jewel-hued take on a favourite Mozart piece, Il Seraglio, at Sadler’s Wells (1952), where he also designed a vibrantly Caribbean Mardi Gras world for the premiere of Malcolm Williamson’s The Violins of Saint-Jacques (1966). An early ballet excursion saw him collaborate with Sir Frederick Ashton on Romeo and Juliet (1955) for the Royal Danish Ballet; revived and revised later under Peter Schaufuss, Rice’s delicate, filmy dresses seemed just as fresh.

An Old Vic season (1956) for which Rice designed three Shakespeare plays was distinguished especially by Michael Benthall’s lucid production of The Winter’s Tale, graced by a fine cast including Wendy Hiller’s unusually spirited Hermione in Rice’s neo-classical set against a background of constantly-changing atmospheric skyscapes. West End work included successful ventures in revue – Living for Pleasure (Garrick, 1958), with Dora Bryan in drollest form, and The Lord Chamberlain Regrets (Saville, 1961), featuring some fine work from Millicent Martin – while in the straight-play field his haunting, wintry chateau for Françoise Sagan’s offbeat family drama Castle in Sweden (Piccadilly, 1962) was among his best work of this time.

This rich professional period ran in parallel with the early years of Rice’s long and profoundly happy marriage to the designer Pat Albeck, then just beginning her still-continuing association with the National Trust. Her eye for colour matched that of her husband; the kitchen of their tall, terraced Hammersmith house near the river (neighbouring friends included Kaye Webb of Puffin Books and fellow-designer Jocelyn Herbert) was crowded with bright Clarice Cliff pottery and paintings by another local resident, Mary Fedden.

Under Sir John Clements’ leadership at the Chichester Festival Theatre Rice proved a master of that tricky hexagonal stage, graveyard of not a few designers. His times in leafy Sussex included a landmark season (1966) when he came up with designs as varied as the warm, bucolic countryside for Phillpott’s The Farmer’s Wife, a superbly adaptable solution to the interior and exterior demands of Shaw’s Heartbreak House (which transferred to the Lyric, 1967) in which he gowned Irene Worth’s luminous Hermione in flowing William Morris fabrics and, at dangerously short notice when Danny Kaye pulled out of a scheduled Goldoni comedy, the riotous technicolour romp of An Italian Straw Hat. Subsequent Chichester productions included the (literally) dazzling mirrored and gilt Embassy setting for Rattigans’s The Sleeping Prince (1983, transferring to the Haymarket) with Omar Sharif.

South London’s Greenwich Theatre proved a congenial home for Rice, whose many production there throughout the 1970s and ’80s ranged from a breathtaking recreation of Manet’s “Dejeuner sur L’Herbe” for David Pownall’s An Audience Called Edouard (1979) with Jeremy Irons centre and Susan Hampshire nude on the right, and a revelatory scrutiny of Pinter’s Betrayal (1984) in its first London revival.

Rice took a radically pared-down approach, using only some key pieces of furniture set against an inky void for the play’s various locations, a markedly effective contrast to the original National Theatre’s complex set with a revolve. Also for Greenwich he designed a meticulous Art Deco hotel balcony and a sleekly chic 1930s Paris interior for a 50th anniversary production of Coward’s Private Lives (transferring to the Duchess, 1980) with superb costumes for Maria Aitken’s shimmering Amanda, alluring in flowing silk pyjamas for the high jinks of the second act.

Further opera work included Rudolf Hartmann’s production of Arabella for the Royal Opera House (1965) and the squib of Mozart’s Der Schauspieldirektor (Glyndebourne, 1957) for Anthony Besch, who became a regular Rice collaborator. A rewarding link with Scottish Opera from the 1960s gave him a choice run of productions, often for Besch or Peter Ebert – Faust, Falstaff, La Bohème and, most notably, the Tosca (1980) with Besch which remained in the company’s repertoire for an astonishing three decades.

Originally conceived as relocated to the era of Napoleon’s occupation of Italy, after viewing Rossellini’s Rome, Open City, Rice and Besch changed their setting to Mussolini’s Rome, long before such time shifts became almost mandatory in the opera house. Crystallising his belief that “the designer is the eyes of the production and the director the brain” and also his fondness for complex ideas distilled into simple images, Rice came up with three memorable sets, the final act on the ramparts of the Castel St’Angelo dominated by a vast statue shrouded in scaffolding being particularly striking.

When the producer Michael Codron had problems with his Joyce Grenfell show Re:Joyce! with Maureen Lipman, on its less-than -happy regional try-out which saw its original creative team replaced, Rice came to his rescue for the revised version (Fortune and Vaudeville Theatres, 1988 and 1989) with an ingenious, elegant design in dove-grey with some astutely chosen projections and key trucked pieces from the wings for the various monologues and songs; his old revue expertise was invaluable to the production.

Continuing to work with undimmed enthusiasm into his eighties, Rice found a happy association with Holland Park Opera under Michael Volpe, an organisation which he much admired. His productions there included the rarity of Mascagni’s Iris (1997), for which his subtly stylised bridge provided a self-effacing frame for the sumptuous costumes (here the work of couturiers Charles and Patricia Lester) and a glittering Art Deco world for the high spirits of La Rondine (2011).

Always encouraging to younger talent, Rice was proud to see some of his assistants strike out on successful solo careers. They included Paul Farnsworth and Lez Brotherston (whose work for Sir Matthew Bourne’s version of Swan Lake he thought very fine). He also had happy times when refurbishing two favourite theatres, the Vaudeville in the Strand in 1970 for its then-owner and regular collaborator, producer Sir Peter Saunders, and the gem of Aberdeen’s His Majesty’s during its glory days under the Donald family.

Seeming much younger than his years and re-settled in a charming Norfolk village, Rice latterly worked for over a year on a pet project of a large mural designed for the Stoke factory of his ceramicist daughter-in-law, Emma Bridgewater. His son Matthew, the author and illustrator whose style of penmanship owes something to that of his father, remembering Rice’s stories of working on the interior of a house in the Bahamas, suggested a mural incorporating Stoke landmarks such as the Spode and Wedgwood factories amid elements of Bahamian history.

The eventual design was an exuberant explosion of colour, Potteries brickwork mingling with abundant greenery and palms; unveiled two years ago it will remain a life-enhancing reminder of a delightful man and his talent.

Peter Anthony Morrish Rice, stage designer: born Simla, India 13 September 1928; married 1954 Patricia Albeck (one son); died 24 December 2015.