Scott Fleary Productions collaborated with set and costume designer Ben Stones and the National Theatre’s production and sustainability teams to deliver the scenery for Robert Hastie’s new production of Hamlet on the Lyttelton stage. Olivier Award-winner Hiran Abeysekera leads the cast in what has become one of the most anticipated stagings of the play in recent years, with the production also scheduled for a National Theatre Live release.

The build carried significance beyond the production itself. Hamlet served as the trial show for the National Theatre’s new modular flattage system, conceived by the NT and constructed by Scott Fleary, with the intention that a successful outcome could meaningfully change how the theatre approaches scenic design going forward. The system uses standardised steel frames clad in polycarbonate twin-wall panels and wrapped in painted canvas, allowing scenic elements to be reused and reconfigured across future productions rather than being built from scratch each time. Its development reflects the principles set out in The Theatre Green Book, and this production was the first real test of whether those principles could withstand the demands of a major staging.

The design, inspired by the Painted Hall at Greenwich, involved a considerable amount of architectural panelling, moulding and ornamental detail, all finished by the National Theatre’s in-house scenic artists. Scott Fleary worked closely alongside that team, sequencing the supply of completed elements to fit around their finishing schedule rather than operating independently.

Structurally, the project presented some genuinely complex engineering problems. Half of the set was designed to fly out into the grid mid-performance, revealing a secondary stage beneath, with very little clearance between adjacent elements. Every moulding had to align precisely across neighbouring flats when the upper structure was returned to position. The door units added another layer of difficulty: the larger frames stood over three metres tall and were built as independent trucked units that moved in and out of their openings at various points during the show. Because they needed to travel freely, no door sills could be used, and without sills, maintaining the squareness of a frame under load requires an engineered solution that leaves no margin for error.