For OperaGlass Works’ film-led staging at Wilton’s, Lewis built a chiaroscuro language that lets dread live in the negative space. Motivated practicals, candle-adjacent colour temperatures and razor-clean shutters sculpt faces against Wilton’s time-worn textures, using the building’s patina as a textural backdrop that deepens shadow and atmosphere. Camera-first cueing and soft haze create depth without glare, while low-level practical glows pull the eye through doorways and along galleries. The palette stays period-true yet psychologically sharp, so glimmers, half-glimpses and sudden voids carry the story’s ambiguity to the final frame.

"It would have been easy to overplay the gothic in this space, but designer Tom Piper and Lewis Hannaby’s lighting defy expectations — opening outdoors in a hazy, summery glow, and only gradually chilling things right down to candle stubs and shadows." - Alexandra Coghlan, The Spectator

"The spectral flute and bass clarinet duet of Variation XI is especially eerie, illuminated by that single, naked bulb. Lewis Hannaby’s superb lighting shrouds events in nocturnal gloom, then suffuses the stage in sunlight." - Mark Pullinger, Backtrack

“A brilliantly creepy virtue out of necessity… reimagined as a very effective film.” — The Guardian

“Designs and lighting by Tom Piper and Lewis Hannaby give the show a threatening, catastrophic feel.” — OperaWire