Of Algerian‚ Polish and Scottish descent‚ British born Zahra Mansouri graduated in Theatre Design for Performance at Central Saint Martins. She has been nominated twice for the Off-West End Awards and for 10 years was the associate designer at Fourth Monkey during which time she created 75 shows. Zahra has a background in competitive Ballroom and Latin Dancing, where she refined skills in designing and making competitive dance wear in collaboration with leading dance couture houses‚ Chrisanne and Dance Sport International. She now prides herself on creating work that is informed by her knowledge of movement and understanding of people inhabiting space.
Most recent and current operatic projects include L’Etoile (Opera Zuid), The Elixir of Love (English National Opera), The Secret of the Black Spider, Susanna and Love Life (Opera North), La Sonnambula, La Traviata and La Liberazione di Ruggiero (Buxton Festival), Semele (Blackheath Halls), and Dead Man Walking (Oldenburgisches Staatstheater). Recent Associate work with Leslie Travers includes Peter Grimes (Theater Magdeburg), Peter Grimes (Theater Basel) and Cav and Pag (Greek National Opera). Other notable recent theatre work includes the Whodunnit series and When it happens to you (Park Theatre), Incubating Entrepreneurs (Amazon Reality Series), Immersive Cinema Experience (Backyard Cinema), a gaming feature film The Night Book (Good Gate Media), Typical (Soho Theatre on Demand), Killer Party an online musical series (Aria Entertainment), The Fairy-tale Revolution: emergency livestream pantomime (Theatre 503).
Early design work includes: Goldilocks and The Three Musketeers (Battersea Arts Centre) 3 Women (Trafalgar Studios)‚ media campaign shoots for the NHS and Refugee Action (Brickwall Productions)‚ Henry V‚ Pericles‚ The Tempest‚ Romeo and Juliet‚ Widows‚ Ghetto‚ and new writing pieces: Bombshells‚ Kidnap! and Fatty Arbuckle‚ (Fourth Monkey House)‚ Hansel and Gretel (The Rose Theatre)‚ The Trenches (Les Enfants Terrible at the Southwark Play House), Late Company (transfer‚ Trafalgar Studio 2 from Finborough Theatre)‚ Movie Trilogy Tour (The Royal Albert Hall Studio‚ Pleasance King Dome‚ BAC)‚ devised site specific project: Orlando (Knole House and Hanbury Hall in association with BFI ‘Flare)‚ The Great Gatsby (Wilton’s Music Hall)‚ This Little life of mine (Park Theatre)‚ Finding Butterfly (Limehouse Town Hall)‚ The Shallow End (Southwark Play House)‚ The Marked (Oval House)‚ Paradise Lost (Trinity Buoy Wharf)‚ Blood Wedding (Theatre Cavantes)‚ The Cause (Jermyn Street Theatre)‚ Elephant Man (Brockley Jack)‚ 4.48 Psychosis (Theatro Technis)‚ Being Tommy Cooper (The Old Red Lion) and Hamlet‚ Much Ado About Nothing and The Bells (Park Theatre 90) and film includes: The Good Neighbour and Shadow Plant (Black House Pictures)‚ Brighton to Southgate (Aegis Film Productions)‚ Diversion (LA Productions)‚ and Stolen (Fahrenheit Films).
This highly entertaining staging of Emmanuel Chabrier's operetta (1877) directed by Matthew Eberhardt strikes just the right chord. Set and costume designer Zahra Mansouri has translated the silly wit of the plot and the score into an exuberant but tasteful stage set.
The stage is decorated in shades of pink, blue, gold and yellow. The palace room – a round stage with several layers, a bit like a cake – also serves as a carousel, people's square, party hall or wedding chapel with a swipe of the golden pole construction. And the whole, designed by Zahra Mansouri, screams 'Let them eat cake!' in more ways. The berets, whitepainted faces and an abundance of frills: It's giving Frans hof. Cruel and spoiled king with a flair for drama included.
On stage, a mixture of carousel and golden cage can be seen and the pastel-colored costumes, for which Zahra Mansouri is equally responsible, turn the lively narrative into a colorful firecracker. Despite, or perhaps because of, the bizarre plot, the Operazuid presents such a work for the whole family, without the opera degenerating into a pure fairy tale play.
Set & costume design are done by Zahra Mansouri who really pulled out all the stops to make it a festive whole. The décor is simple but very effective: a simple merry-go-round that accommodates a throne in Ouf's palace, but by turning and adding or removing a few set pieces manages to suggest a different place of action. The king, court and the people are very brightly dressed. The visiting diplomatic mission, on the other hand, is in black, although Laoula and Aloès, the wife of ambassador Hérisson, are wearing very nice dresses. The fairground character of the merry-go-round contrasts well with the strict austerity of the diplomatic mission, which is rather high on the head through the ambassador and his assistant Tapioca.
The staging of Matthew Eberhardt offers a magical and sparkling reading. The multicoloured costumes impose a contrast between the bright and sunny hues of the court and the more austere clothes of the diplomatic corps, in sets designed by Zahra Mansouri (who was also in charge of designing the costumes). In the centre of the stage, the throne of King Ouf sits, transformed into a merry-go-round overlooked by a huge crown, in front of a vast lapis lazuli-coloured circle (lights by Danny Vavrečka), a nod to the main character of this title. This deliberately childlike and enchanting universe aligns with the fantasy of the libretto and the whimsical temperament of the sovereign.
During the overture, given with the curtain open, the staging seems almost naïve at first, with its elements borrowed from a childish universe – a merry-go-round of wooden horses and a clown costume for King Ouf – but soon frees itself from this slightly too good-natured first degree, in particular thanks to the interventions of the chorus, wearing 1900 outfits revised and corrected by our time, moustaches, sideburns and Bermuda shorts for the gentlemen, buns and dresses worn over trousers for the ladies.
Zahra Mansouri’s gorgeous set and costume designs play with wispy, web-like textures—at first subtly, with gauzy fabric sketching out a Carpathian backdrop, and then more powerfully as otherworldly forces move in.
Olivia Fuch’s Staging is in modern dress but avoids such explicit references. Played out on and bellow Zahra Mansouri’s gantry set symbolically entwined with the suffocating branches of an old tree it instead amplifies this timeless storytelling in a much more interesting way.
Zahra Mansouri's gantry set and modern costumes in pastel shades kept the focus firmly on the drama, with Jake Wiltshire's lighting a constant ally.
There are vivid and flamboyant costumes- set and costume designed by Zahra Mansouri, and the recurring visual theme is one of lighting trusses arranged in ever more complicated concatenations to accompany the complications of married life
This rip-roaring revival of the 1948 collaboration between Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner touches a nerve and reinvents the genre … they have commendably returned to launch this minimalist but highly effective staging by Matthew Eberhardt, economically designed by Zahra Mansouri.
Fehr and his designers (sets by Nicky Shaw, costumes by Zahra Mansouri) have a bold idea: during the overture, the drop-curtain becomes a giant TV set showing an animation informing us that we’re about to watch a sitcom from days gone by.
“Zahra Mansouri’s period costumes are spot-on”
Everyone was in gorgeous costumes, designed by Zahra Mansouri
Nicky Shaw’s sets and Zahra Mansouri’s costumes place the piece in a workers’ canteen and in Lisa’s spare bedroom in the 1950s. Both of them look a treat.
By displacing the action onto four different floors, the piece is permeated by a sense of structural disorientation, which allows the company to play with spaces and visuals. The multiple rooms are decorated with simple materials crafted into vivid and truly impressive sets. From woodland to a cold corporate meeting room, the look of the production and the peculiar use of props are as remarkable as the configuration of the subject matter itself.
In Zahra Manouri’s simple, but versatile suspended set she created a series of almost ritualistic tableaux that included a procession around the theatre (a converted church) and surreal projections such as a moon that became a rolling eyeball.
'It comes as a shock to walk into the theatre and be confronted by a sumptuous hotel suite complete with champagne flutes and roses. This is the kind of set that once would have got a welcoming round of applause in Shaftesbury Avenue.'
'Zahra Mansouri’s set design is snazzier and more detailed. The dining room is spotless in its simple grandeur and shows off the Shaun-Hastings’ significant wealth.'
'Both the set and costumes were subtle‚ but well observed enough to communicate the different social standings of the two families as they spend an evening crossing the great divide of middle and upper middle.'
'The set‚ brilliantly detailed... The set by Zahra Mansouri makes you feel that you‚ too‚ have been invited to this sad soirée.'
'Zahra Mansouri’s design transforms Theatre503’s tiny space into a treasure chest of imagination as scenes flip between Victorian London‚ Fairytale Land and Lapland.'
It comes as a shock to walk into the theatre and be confronted by a sumptuous hotel suite complete with champagne flutes and roses. This is the kind of set that once would have got a welcoming round of applause in Shaftesbury Avenue.
The set is an inspired choice
'Limehouse Town Hall‚ a massive shell of a building steeped in history and containing that empty and slightly haunted sense of an unfrequented venue‚ provides the perfect atmosphere for this reimagined storyline. It is complemented by a minimalist set of hospital beds and wheelchairs‚ and an ensemble of patients‚ a motley crew of characters who provide just enough colour to what otherwise is a very small cast without obstructing the focus of the storyline.'
Limehouse Town Hall‚ a massive shell of a building steeped in history and containing that empty and slightly haunted sense of an unfrequented venue‚ provides the perfect atmosphere for this reimagined storyline. It is complemented by a minimalist set of hospital beds and wheelchairs‚ and an ensemble of patients‚ a motley crew of characters who provide just enough colour to what otherwise is a very small cast without obstructing the focus of the storyline.