For Turn of the Screw UK Tour:
"Matt Leventhall’s lighting smooths out some of these rougher edges, with a design of tremendous, tenebrous subtlety. Shadows lengthen and gaslight flickers in the encroaching gloom. Silhouettes appear behind foggy windowpanes, spectres freeze in lightning flashes, and brimstone-yellow cracks open up in the floorboards."
The Stage
"It was no surprise to see a long list of classical theatre credits after the name of Matt Leventhall, the Lighting Designer, who deserves special mention. Although there are obvious bangs and jumps and sudden lights out moments to keep the audience jumping, the more subtle layering of shadows and downlights gave a real boost to the overall gothic and insidious feel of the play throughout to the point that one felt both relieved and over exposed when it was time for the house lights to come back up."
Spy In The Stalls
"Matt Leventhall’s lighting give the production its vital creepiness. What we need to see is illuminated brightly, but the rest of the stage is a pitch black expanse in which we fear evil could be lurking"
The Beast's Pen
"The deft touches of lighting designer Matt Leventhall keep you on edge right from the start"
Worcester News
"It is highly atmospheric and Matt Leventhall’s lighting design captures that, as his mixture of sudden blackouts and quick flashes have the audience jumping out of their seat with trepidation."
Sincerely Amy
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For Captain Flinn UK Tour:
"Matt Leventhall’s lighting brings the atmosphere thrillingly to life"
Finding Scotland
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For The Events at the Mercury Theatre:
"The production is beautifully lit by Matt Leventhall"
britishtheatre.com
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For Moth at the Hope Mill Theatre:
"Moths are attracted by lights and, appropriately, Matt Leventhall’s lighting – neon strips hanging haphazardly over the audience and startlingly dazzling lights at either end of the stage – help to set the disconcerting atmosphere for the play."
Manchester Theatre Awards
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For Light at The Battersea Arts Centre and at the Lowry Manchester:
"While there are no spoken words, technology abounds to tell us a very unsettling story. The main selling point of Light is it’s exceptionally clever lighting, designed by Matthew Leventhall. In a pitch black auditorium, the cast of 5 use a mix of LED torches and bars to light each little vignette accordingly. There are hints of film noir, with side and back lighting sketching out silhouettes in the gloom, and novel usage of movement to suggest hurtling up or down in a lift. There is also searing brightness as lights are periodically swung round to the audience, leaving a cumulative criss-cross of imprints on your retinas."
"Matthew Leventhall uses simple but flexible lighting designs, such as floating neon tubes, to create a triangle of light that illuminates scientists at work or spies undertaking surveillance. Scenes burst from the darkness and are extinguished after only a few seconds but make such a strong impression they seem to last much longer. Sinister spies emerge from, and vanish into, the gloom while ghostly lights hover overhead. Like hellfire in Milton’s poem Light makes darkness visible rather than provide illumination and it envelops the cast setting a mood of deepening paranoia."
Manchester Theatre Awards
It’s a gob-smacking fusion of eyeball-searing, seizure-inducing LED lighting. This kind of show cannot be put together without expert technicians and for Matthew Leventhall, Lighting Designer, no praise is high enough."
LondonTheatre1.com
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For Hamlet is Dead No Gravity at The Arcola Theatre:
"Light plays an integral part of this production and Matt Leventhall’s lighting design is thrilling, affording the play the ability to rapidly change to different scenarios with effortless ease. A huge pool of white light indicates the family in a sort of interrogation or counselling room, making the audience seem as if they are the outlet for these characters to let out their built-up frustrations."
A Younger Theatre
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For Sikes and Nancy at Trafalgar Studios:
"Simply astonishing lighting from Matt Leventhall. every change of mood, change of scene, change of character is profoundly aided by Leventhall's skill. It is genius to watch."
BritishTheatre.com
"Effective lighting (Matt Leventhall) assists in maintaining a spooky atmosphere, enabling Max Shreck-like shadows on the walls."
Entertainment Focus
"The lighting design was spot on...bringing crucial moments out clear and bright."
TCS
"Credit must go to the astonishingly effective lighting by Matt Leventhall...It's this that creates the heightened sense of reality that's needed to make this show work, dragging us kicking and screaming through Dickens' darkest literary moment."
London City Nights
"Matt Leventhall's lighting is particularly effective in creating visual images to match the vividly descriptive words being spoken."
The Public Reviews
"The lighting design by Matt Leventhall was highly effective, as he shrouded the most ominous parts of the play in near darkness, playing to the suggestive nature of the performance."
Page to Stage
"Matt Leventhall's brilliant lighting design does what all great lighting should, giving the performance all the light and shade required to make it a joy to watch."
Bargaintheatreland.com
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For A Christmas Carol at the Old Red Lion:
"Very effective lighting designed by Matt Leventhall brings scenes alive."
The Public Reviews
"Another star is lighting designer Matt Leventhall, whose work creates pools of darkness and fearful spotlights that shine a light on Scrooge's worst secrets and deepest fears. Leventhall also creates a chilling vision for the lost souls dragging their chains through eternity"
WhatsOnStage.com
"A Christmas Carol relies a lot on the lighting to evoke mood and atmosphere. It turns out that this is all courtesy of Matt Leventhall, which makes this the second day in a row I've praised his technical skills."
London City Nights
"One of my favourite elements of this humble but well-staged productions is the lighting by Matt Leventhall. There is a moment when the first ghost, Christmas past, appears that quite honestly took my breath away - the lighting not only captured, but also informed the mood of each scene which is doubly impressive for such a small space."
thetheatretourist.com
"Matt Leventhall's lighting is the chief cause of the eerie aura, it creates vital chilly ambience."
View from the Gods
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For Theatre Ad Infinitum's Light, Edinburgh Fringe Run and UK Tour:
"Technically Dazzling"
The Times
"The genius behind the lighting is Matthew Leventhall"
The Public Reviews
"Mention must be made of Matthew Leventhall. Light is a reminder that stage effects don't just happen by themselves. too often the director is given the credit for what a show looks like, but without Leventhall then Light could not have happened."
CivilianTheatre.com
"Matthew Leventhall uses simple but flexible lighting designs in a staggering technical innovation"
Manchester Theatre Awards
"What makes this production truly compelling and unlike anything I have ever seen is its use of night and sound. The detail and creativity employed by Matthew Leventhall is astounding."
Everything Theatre
"Rarely do two of a show’s biggest stars sit in the dark at the back of the room, but that’s what Matthew Leventhall and [director] George Mann do here... Together they create the show’s menacing world."
The Scotsman
The most important thing to say about ‘Light’ is that it is a jaw-dropping technical achievement.... via a remarkable deployment of flashlights – which stand in for everything from the search beams of hovering aircraft to the hiss and fizz of electrical torture devices – and tiny glowing balls that whizz through the air along careful arcs, representing a futuristic form of mental email that the governments of the world have taken it upon themselves to spy on. It looks staggering…what they’ve done visually is so astonishing.
Time Out
"There is no doubt that Theatre Ad Infinitum have pushed theatrical boundaries with this production in terms of its visual style. Some of the effects achieved with little more than movement, torches and LED strips are stunning to a point where they comply with another of Clarke's laws that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".
Edinburgh Guide
"Technically, it’s stunning … the cast using torches, light bars, coloured, luminous, moving beams to illuminate the production and their skills are awe-inspiring."
British Theatre Guide
"The show is staged in complete and utter darkness. It’s the kind of profound darkness you rarely get in a theatre because of fire escape signs and health and safety and so on, but somehow they’ve swung it and what they do with it is just unbelievably inventive. Using nothing more than lighting and mime to create a dystopian world, watching Light is an exhilarating experience."
Exeunt Mag
"The ticket warns of darkness, loud, immersive sound and flashing lights but that does no justice to the creativity that then unfolds….lights and sounds are used to amazingly imaginative effect."
Edinburgh Evening News
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For Lubkinfinds' Fishskin Trousers, Finborough Theatre
Best Lighting Designer Finalist
Off West End Awards
“A subtle and shadowy production on a black box set eerily lit by Matt Leventhall.”
Time Out
“A Spartan set beautifully well lit by Matt Leventhall.”
One Stop Arts
“Matt Leventhall’s lighting design alternates between dappled water, a densely thorough blackout and pooling light that switches the trio on and off one by one, like light bulbs – a tight spotlight that puts full focus on their performances.”
Exeunt Magazine