Reviews, articles and other clippings...
London Living Large 12/19
The Lost Thing - Review *****
by D.S.J.
"Throughout the background shifts with stunning projections by Will Holt"
Culture Whisper 10/12/19
The Lost Thing - Review ****
by Claudia Pritchard
"the set and vivid video back projections by Will Holt are faithful to Shaun Tan's magical book"
Plays To See 23/12/19
The Lost Thing - Review *****
by Blake Gordon Plante
"Accessible and heart-felt, The Lost Thing is a beautiful adaptation of Shaun Tan's picture book of the same title, by the disabled and non-disabled dancers of Candoco and musicians with the Royal Opera House"
British Theatre Guide 07/12/19
The Lost Thing - Review ****
by Vera Liber
"Will Holt's cosy set"
Music OMH 18/07/19
Don Giovanni - Review ****
by Sam Smith
"In Will Holt's set, the action takes place in the changing rooms of a sports centre with characters frequently receiving massages and walking around in bathrobes or substantially less. All of this creates an area in which Don Giovanni almost seems to have a licence to behave as he pleases, and that is the danger that this production highlights. Donald Trump used the phrase 'locker room banter' to suggest something which was harmless, but as this production reveals it is anything but. In this way, as Trump declared 'Make America Great Again' when it seems his intention was to make himself great, so Don Giovanni adopts the line from the libretto 'Viva la liberta!', which, in this translation, becomes 'Freedom For All Mankind'. The words appear on his bathrobe and the wall of the sports centre, but really he is using a 'populist' slogan to justify his own freedom to behave as he pleases."
Classical Source 11/07/19
Don Giovanni - Review ****
by David Truslove
"This is a man's world amplified in Will Holt's designs"
Plays To See 13/07/19
Don Giovanni - Review *****
"Full praise must also be given to the set and costume design by Will Holt"
by Mel Cooper
Swedish press quotes for To Find A Way With One Another (2018)
"A velvety dark piece of its very own about the beauty of humanity's laborious attempts at living together side by side" - Sydsvenskan
"The piece is brave, honest and beautiful with a sense of compassion between the participants which is a joy to watch" - Skanska Dagbladet
"A beautifula and intriguing experience" - Det Hander
"A thought provoking and slightly alarming work" - Kristianstadsbladet
"Rural touring: Designing a miniature lighthouse for village halls"
by Will Holt
The Guardian 24/09/18
Point of Echoes - Review ****
By Sanjoy Roy
"Designed to be playable anywhere from local theatres to village halls, Ben Wright's choreographed play has small resources but creates a big world"
Swedish press quotes for Spectrum (2017)
"Entertaining and thoughtful, the show is marked by both freshness and dazzling beauty... This is a dance performance worth remembering... a spectacular experience" - Skanska Dagbladet
"A blast of colour...strong associations created by small details on a stripped-down stage" - Det Hander
"An unusual dance performance, a playful collage of movement, visual art, music in a dialogue with the audience of what colour is, or could be" - Danstidningen
Swedish press quotes for To See The World While The Light Lasts (2016)
"To see the world while the light lasts is a lavish show full of details, and shows once again that he is a master at creating dreamy worlds" - Skånska Dagbladet
"Magnificent and deeply moving" - Sydsvenskan
"A beautiful journey that explores loss and grief" - Svenska Dagbladet
"Dazzling and beautiful" - Kristianstadtsbladet
Swedish press quotes for The Feeling of Going (2013)
"It's magnificent - and impossible not to love" - Sydsvenskan
"Surreal, fabulous and dreamlike" - Landets Fria
"Glorious, enchanting..." - Helsingborgs Dagblad
"It is striuking how well all the artistic components combine in the joint ambition to create a contemporary dream world, merging fairytale and psychoanalysis" - Skånskan
"Performance of the year" - Skånska Dagbladet
Financial Times 03/06/12
The Walk From the Garden - Review ****
By David Honigmann
"The set placed a door at the top of a set of steps, surmounted by an illiminated cinema exit sign, reversed. At the foot of the steps old fridges were scattered like boulders of ice calved off from Rachel Whiteread's "Embankment", her 2005-06 Tate Turbine Hall project. Behind the door, in Eden, assembled a choir, the voice of God. With an opening blare of organ, and a pounding of kettledrums, they sang Milton's version of the expulsion, all thorns and thistles and dust, like a mass plunging straight into the dies irae."
Time Out, 26/09/11
Manga Sister - Review **** Critic's Choice
By Andrzej Lukowski
"Martin Constantine's lucid direction, Will Holt's cleanly inventive design and projections, and a uniformly impressive group of singers, dancers and musicians combine to imbue this slight, striking show with gleeful conviction and surprisingly professionalism. An eccentric gem."
The Big Issue, 15/01/09, "Keeping it in-house"
Far Removed - Review ****
By Steven Corr
"When you think in terms of an ideal location to house new work from two of Glasgow School of Art's most exciting graduates, a warehouse on the outskirts of the city doesn't immediately spring to mind. The studio on Eastvale Place (SWG3),home of Will Holt and Jonny Shaw's new exhibition Far Removed, replaces the hustle and bustle of city life with a post-industrial site. . . . Shaw has taken inspiration from the distorted architectural work of Gaudi, while Holt fuses his backround in fine art with later work in theatre design, evident in his video piece of two actors running lines out of sync - reflecting the script as a starting point for creative thought. After the success of this exhibition, Holt and Shaw are planning to work together in the future. What it contains and where it will be housed is equally exciting."
The Herald, 12/01/09, "Looking behind the scenes of real life"
Far Removed - Arts Feature
By Keith Bruce
"Two graduates of Glasgow School of Art are reuniting to stage a joint show in what could be the city's rawest venue"
Design Week, 14/11/07, "Linbury Stage prize contenders on show"
Linbury Prize exhibition - Feature
By Nick Smurthwaite
"The winner of the Linbury Biennial Prize for Stage Design is to be announced at the National Theatre in London this week and 12 finalists have been placed at four top drama companies to work alongside directors on a live brief. Nick Smurthwaite looks at works in progress of four of the contenders
Linbury finalist - Will Holt
Production - Varjak Paw
Company - The Opera Group
While working on this musical adaptation of a children's book about a colony of urban cats, the three Linbury finalists were asked to come up with a style of storytelling that evokes the book without leaning too heavily on its striking illustrations by Dave McKean. 'The story is very cinematic, with numerous settings and short scenes,' says finalist Will Holt. 'The main challenge was the fluid movement of one scene to another.' Holt's solution was to create two monolithic plinth-like structures that can be adapted to various uses, as well as a couple of framed lightboxes suspended above the stage, which can be used to suggest different times and settings. The floor of his set, made from steel sheets, has a 'shimmering quality, suggesting the city on a rainy night'. To avoid the cliche of a painted cityscape on the back wall, Holt came up with three interlocking neon skylines in purple, red and blue. 'Colour and light are very important to me,' he says. Director John Fulljames met with each designer four times, providing a sounding board for their ideas, while avoiding steering them in any particular direction. He also gave them a hypothetical budget of £20 000. For Holt, a tight budget 'forces you to come up with ingenious solutions. Ultimately, this is a family show, so you can't afford to be too slick or abstract'."