For The Book Of Will

Carla Goodman’s autumnal costumes are warm russet and lichen.

The Guardian

…beautiful 17th century costumes (excellent work from Carla Goodman throughout)

Broadway World

The costume design is stunning..

West End Best Friend

For Guy Fawkes

Carla Goodman brings magic to the stage with an imaginative set and sublime costumes. The production is a visual feast…

One Play More

…the costumes were outstanding..

Fairy Powered

…hat tip to Carla Goodman for her stunning sets and costumes

Yorkshire Times

The production has flashes of fun; Carla Goodman’s costumes and Eamonn O’Dwyer’s music, evoking the period with witty twists

The Observer

An impressively detailed set designed by Carla Goodman

British Theatre Guide

I loved the costumes and I loved the characters

Yorkshire Wonders

For Looking at Lucian

the physical world here is perfect. Carla Goodman’s set is irreproachable; everything you could wish for, right up to the canvas-frame skylights that let Oliver Fenwick’s lighting sing.

Gill Kirk, Bristol 24/7

Using forced perspective to expand the tiny space of the Ustinov’s stage, Carla Goodman has painstakingly recreated Freud’s studio... It’s all here if you look for it: the piles of dirty rags that repeatedly appear in his works, including Triple Portrait (1986/7); the clunky unlaced boots of Painter Working, Reflection (1993) and the living palette of a painted wall in The Painter Surprise by a Naked Admirer (2005). The walls are a particularly evocative part of the set. Layers of browns, greys and reds dapple one on top of the other, but cutting through the cloud of colour is always the whitest of whites, Freud’s beloved Cremnitz White that created both the tone and texture of the skin in his paintings.

Rosemary Waugh, Exeunt

We are looking at the older Lucian Freud in his London studio. Its sash windows are boarded up; daylight enters through glass panels overhead. Paint-smeared walls become extensions of the painter’s palette: Carla Goodman’s realistic set symbolises a life contoured by painting.

Clare Brennan, The Guardian

designed in loving detail by Carla Goodman

Sarah Hemming, Financial Times

For Gabriel

The designer Carla Goodman conveys a real feeling of place: the walls are left unfinished, so we see the sky and can almost smell the sea, never far on Guernsey. The whole set is both elevated and tilted, as skew-whiff as life under occupation must have felt. We never leave the house (the set, cleverly, shows both attic and kitchen) but, then, we don't need to.  

Ann Treneman, The Times

Carla Goodman's beautifully dressed set is elevated on different levels to show the darkness below the house, the ground-floor kitchen, and what becomes Gabriel's room in the attic. A vast expanse of sky is always visible, with menacing-looking clouds that change colour and atmosphere with Will Evans' clever lighting. There is more than a subtle hint of the levels of hell, earth and heaven.

Aliya Al-Hassan, Broadway World

Carla Goodman's powerful stage set evokes the declining fortunes of the Becquet family... Every aspect of this production is outstanding.

Dave Jennings, British Theatre Guide

Carla Goodman's set seems to float the house above the stage against a brooding seascape, echoing the isolation of the island and the characters.

Paul Vale, The Stage

If you know someone who needs reminding how spellbinding live theatre can be, get them to see Gabriel .

Jamie Mcloughlin, Liverpool Echo

For Bystanders

The show definitely owes its dynamism to the structure – chaotic yet well-knit makes the very same lines sound funny first, to unclothe their grim touch later on. Moreover, a clever use of both stage design and properties allows the actors to depict various spaces and circumstances effectively and authentically.

Magdalena Puilt, Theatre Weekly

The playfulness of the storytelling never undermines the seriousness of the subject matter. The use of images and video footage of the people and events described here keeps jolting us back to reality.

Allan Radcliffe, The Times

Bystanders is an energetically performed and cleverly executed piece, reminding us that behind every statistic or news story there's a human being.

Eliza Gearty, The Skinny

…pugnacious, political and urgent

Mark Fisher, The Guardian

For Lunatic 19s

Carla Goodman’s bare, blood-red set brilliantly invokes the blood of Gracie’s miscarriage and the physical brutality of displacement and deportation.

Arifa Akbar, The Guardian

Carla Goodman’s design is the absolute highlight

The View From the Circle

For Heartbreak Hotel

Carla Goodman’s design, cunningly constructed from shipping containers, is enticing. The hotel’s name, picked out in lights, winks an invitation of gently decaying, end-of-pier charm

Sam Marlowe - The Times

It's hard to fault Carla Goodman's design, which has beautifully transformed the containers into numerous distinct rooms that make up the hotel.

Rosie Bannister - What's on Stage

The designs from Carla Goodman are excellent

Tom Eames- Digital Spy

The attention to detail lavished on the sets and dressing here is breathtaking.

Richard Unwin - Gay Times

I was impressed by Carla Goodman's impeccable design for each room

Jody Tranter - West End Frame

For Martha, Josie and the Chinese Elvis

Carla Goodman’s effective set consists of a living room in which images of the real Elvis feature heavily, beneath a structure that is half birdcage, half snow dome….Gemma Fairlie’s production creates a feeling of epiphany, as the characters slowly find that their own personal cages can also become snow domes.

Wendy Pratt, The Stage

Carla Goodman has constructed a domed bird's cage for Charlotte Jones's comical but poignant 1999 drama , wherein everyone is looking for an escape, or a flight of fancy, a transformation, in search of love and fulfilment.

Charles Hutchinson, York Press

For Lose Yourself

Director Patricia Logue starts with an easy pacing as we’re introduced to each individual, but as the story unravels so does everything else, with an almost panicked edge coming through at the height of the night out. It is also in this moment that Carla Goodman’s design really bursts to life; blocky squares lined with neon lights are stacked at various heights – each and every surface has the potential to become a dance floor

Caragh Medlicott, Wales Arts Review

Director Patricia Logue keeps the play pacy and rhythmic, using Carla Goodman’s set to great effect. It’s a simple but atmospheric one that brings the play to life

Kevin Johnson, Get The Chance

For Pride and Prejudice

 The main story crackles with ideas. Set within an enormous gilded birdcage, the scene shifts from sitting room to ballroom to sitting room with minimal fuss, but always within the boundaries of the large bars.....an inspired creative team and a game company have made Pride and Prejudice fresh again.

Peter Kirwan, Exeunt magazine

The play is beautifully dressed in the lush costumes of the early 1800s, and is set in a giant birdcage of a set. This is the work of designer Carla Goodman and the cast’s work in regularly re-dressing the set is done with great fluidity.

Philip Lowe, East Midlands Theatre

Carla Goodman has created a versatile set encased in an elegant birdcage.

Ann Treneman, The Times

... That's when I fell for this production, set within a gilded cage...I wish I could take my teenage self. 

PN, The Sunday Times

For Miss Julie

The design, by Carla Goodman, is impeccable and noticeable, in the best possible way, as soon as one enters the space. It evokes a pitch-perfect gut feeling for what is to come.

Jamie Pohotsky, Live Theatre UK

 

Carla Goodman’s set is detailed with an old fashioned stove, ornaments and dried herbs and flowers hanging from every nook and cranny, setting a rustic feel that only adds to the authenticity of the 19th century kitchen in which the whole play takes place. Likewise, Goodman’s costumes also excellent.

Charlotte Darcy mytheatremates.com

beautifully designed by Carla Goodman

Gary Naylor broadwayworld.com

For Pig Farm

Top marks for Carla Goodman’s credibly rundown kitchen set.

Libby Purves - Theatre Cat

The entire play is set in the kitchen of Tom and Tina's house, and Carla Goodman captures the run-down state of the farm perfectly. The kitchen appliances are all dirty with years of grime and the table is stained as though from years of use. 

Laura Jones - Broadway World

great design by Carla Goodman

Veronica Lee - Arts Desk

For Listen We're Family

The stage is homely for ‘Listen, We’re Family’: a sofa, a dining table, a display cabinet littered with books and keepsakes. It’s the perfect setting to tell the story of familial relationships of people who grew up in the ‘old East End’.

Lucie Horton - Time Out

the set design is most inviting

Alan Flynn - everything theatre.co.uk

For Mush and Me

..designer Carla Goodman and director Rosy Banham have to be commended for a truly beautiful set.

Ben Hewis - What's on Stage

For Miss Nightingale

Designer Carla Goodman offers us a small stage, suitable for the intimacies of a night-club, flanked by the musical instruments and with George's spartan bedsitter to one side and a suggestion of a dressing-room to the other. It all has an air – appropriate for the period and the story – of make-do-and-mend, so the ENSA finale really packs a punch of its own.

Anne Morley-Priestman - What's on stage

This is a gorgeous, glamorous, hugely entertaining show that simply revels in its setting and atmosphere.

Andrew Clarke - East Anglian Daily Times