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Mark Lawson compares the set design of a number of high-profile theatre shows in the UK, finding that the boards of the British stage are dissolving under a wave of innovation.

Football supporters would be surprised if they turned up at Wembley to discover that the game was going to be played on a temporary five-a-side pitch raised on a platform above the turf. Lord’s ticket-holders would be equally appalled to find that an Ashes match had been moved to the grass in the middle of a roundabout outside the ground. However, such disruptions are becoming standard for theatregoers.
If you enter the Young Vic’s larger auditorium for its current adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial, you’ll find it has been transformed into a courtroom, with spectators sitting on raised banks of wooden benches, judging the inexplicable victimisation of Josef K as it takes place on a planked strip between the ranks of pseudo-jurors.
Go into the Vic’s neighbouring studio space for this summer’s sister offering – a revival of Caryl Churchill’s A Number – and you are directed to one of four small temporary viewing spaces (wooden benches again), from which you watch the actors through a two-way mirror as they perform in a glass box that multiplies their images... Keep reading on The Guardian