Bunny Christie on designing Philistines

Howard [Davies] and I initially looked at lots of paintings from the period, especially scenes of interiors. It's a really common motif to have a figure standing pensively at a window with the light coming in. I think that kind of image is really pertinent to this play, because Tanya [the daughter] never leaves the apartment. Everybody else comes and goes all the time, but she's stuck there like the Lady of Shalott.

Howard was very keen to shift the period of the production – it was written at the turn of the century, but he wanted to move it forward a bit so we're setting it in 1910/1911. And that's really helpful because it tips it into the twentieth century. Skirts get shorter, so the women's appearance loses that late Victorian feel. When I look at the photographs, they make me think of the Suffragettes, girls who want to go out into the world and have an education.

We were both keen that the production wouldn't be on the ground floor – we wanted to place the characters up a storey. It was important to establish that it wasn't a house they were in, but a flat – with a large series of rooms they were living in. There's a strong urban industrial feel to their existence - there's no easy access to a garden or anything rural. We wanted windows upstage, through which you can see other buildings, giving it that 'Rear Window' feel of being to watch other people's lives.

Because of the date shift, we have radiators, and electricity. That's a slight cheat, I suppose, but again there's something about that kind of hissing radiator and buzzing very early electricity that again modernises it. So we're not in a world of gaslight and big Russian stoves – we're in a modern world where people can plug things in. We imagine that Vassilly [the father] has bought this apartment and has spent money doing it up – though not as much as he could. When it's empty, suddenly it seems huge and echoing and very depressing.

The play is about being lonely, being trapped, though it can also be very funny. I think Tanya knows there's a life she could have, but she's not able to get there. Yet there's so much pending that these people aren't aware of – the First World War, the Russian Revolution. And they're about to roll right up against it.

Bunny Christie was talking to Rachel Halliburton of Time Out.