SHOW OBSERVE and PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF THE THEATRE MUSEUM COPYRIGHT THE ESTATE OF MICHAEL ANNALS The Life and Art of Michael Annals by Arnold Wengrow When Michael Annals died in London in June 1990 at age fifty-two, his most frequent collaborator, the director Michael Blakemore, wrote in The Independent that the British stage designer had "the mixed blessing of success at a very early age." That theme was echoed in an unsigned obituary in The Times: "His problem was that he flowered brilliantly and a bit too early." Annals was twenty-three and only two years out of art college when Michael Benthall invited him to design at the Old Vic. Two years later, John Dexter brought him 28 S P R I N G 2 0 0 4 TD & T