Theatre designer and director, teacher, painter and muralist, born in Coventry, Warwickshire, who several times won the Gold Medal of the Royal Drawing Society’s Red Book scheme for children. He attended Coventry Art School and the Slade School of Fine Art and in 1949 won a European travel scholarship. As a boy Barlow developed a love of Shakespeare, directing his classmates and, aged 17, designed over 200 costumes for the Coventry Cathedral Pageant. After serving as designer at the new Bristol Old Vic, Barlow moved with Hugh Hunt, its director, to the London Old Vic, where his first work was Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer. In 1952 he designed the Royal Opera House production of Bellini’s opera Norma, which introduced Maria Callas to British audiences.
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After designing the 1953 Robert Helpmann production of T S Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral at the Old Vic, starring Robert Donat, Barlow became a Benedictine monk at Prinknash Abbey, where he remained for 11 years, designing a set of Stations of the Cross for the monastery chapel and a tapestry for Glastonbury Church. Soon after leaving the monastery in 1965 he was offered a fellowship in drama at Manchester University, becoming head of design and lecturer in Greek theatre. While there, he designed for the Abbey Theatre, in Dublin. In 1969 Barlow became head of design at the National Theatre School of Canada, in Montreal, moving in 1971 to design for the Shakespeare Festival Theatre in Stratford, Ontario, where he was a success. A return to the Abbey Theatre as head of design and guest director encompassed his 1973 Irish Theatre Critics’ Award-winning production of Harold Pinter’s play Old Times. His next year was particularly outstanding, including his design of Shakespeare’s King Lear for the Actors’ Theatre Company, the New English Opera Company production of Benjamin Britten’s comic opera Albert Herring at Aldeburgh and Machiavelli’s La Mandragola in Rotterdam, being based in the Netherlands for most of the next three years. He returned to England to create a characteristically bold and effective set for the world première of John Tavener’s opera Thérèse at Covent Garden, in 1979, the designs of which were bought by the Victoria & Albert Museum for the British Theatre Museum. Heart problems prompted Barlow’s retirement to Norfolk, although in 1995 he did return to Stratford, Ontario, to design a successful production of Euripides’ The Bacchae. Out of the theatre Barlow established a busy career as a painter, notable for his watercolours and depictions of the figure in movement, portraits and murals. He had solo exhibitions in London, Edinburgh, Lavenham, Ontario and in Norfolk, where in 2000 his design for a stained-glass window of the Annunciation was effected at the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Pity in Swaffham. Barlow’s pictures are in many private collections, including that of the Prince of Wales.
Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)
