If there’s one character who pervades every scene of Sommer 14 — A Dance of Death it is, as the title suggests, Death (note for the uninitiated: it’s not a ballet — a dance of death / Totentanz / danse macabre is a mediaeval literary genre centred around the fact we all die…).

German playwright Rolf Hochhuth’s exploration of the events that led to the First World War gives us Death as a wild-eyed and innocent teenager who finds himself on the battlefields paying for the vanity of the European elite.

For the poster and advertising shoot we wanted to create imagery that conveyed three things: that Death was a German soldier, that Death was Death, and that Death was young and innocent and not who you’d expect.

Director Chris Loscher and designer Mike Lees solved the first problem by procuring a full-on German World War I outfit, complete with spiky helmet.

For making Death look like Death, it was for brilliant makeup artist Siwan Hill to work her magic and create a skull that left just enough human face behind to let us know there’s a boy back there.

And to make Death look young and innocent, we went to the font of all persons young and innocent but still old enough that you don’t need 18 child minders and security — people taking their GCSEs — for our (fantastically patient, fantastically willing and generally fantastic) model, whom I shall not name to avoid school gate ribbing.

Sommer 14 — A Dance of Death is currently playing at the Finborough Theatre in Earl’s Court.