Heeley’s experience at the often cash-strapped festival honed his reputation for, as he put it, “making dross look like gold”. For Langham’s 1965 production of Henry IV, Pt I he had a budget for sets and costumes of just $500.

His set for The Importance of Being Earnest, meanwhile, featured a huge and dazzling “crystal” chandelier constructed with plastic wine glasses, picnic cutlery and adhesive tape. He always liked to paint his own scenery and involved himself in every detail of visual presentation. “Dross into Gold” was the subtitle of a exhibition, “The Theatre Alchemy of Desmond Heeley”, held at Gallery Stratford in 1997.

Desmond Heeley was born in Staffordshire on June 1 1931, adopted as a baby and brought up by an adoptive mother who, by his account, thought art and theatre were “the way of the devil”.

In his early teens, however, a teacher at his school noticed the drawings he had scribbled in an exercise book and sent them off to a local art school, which awarded him a small, four-month scholarship. His mother was “appalled at the prospect of my becoming a painter,” he recalled. “All she could see was wicked dope fiends in my future, and she absolutely forbade me to accept the scholarship.” But the 14-year old Heeley dug his heels in, left school and went off to try his hand as an artist.

After a brief spell as an apprentice at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, he joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, where he made his mark designing masks, headdresses and animal hands and feet for a production of Toad of Toad Hall and met Tanya Moiseiwitsch, who became his mentor. His 1956 Hamlet for Michael Langham was his first solo commission.

As well as Canada, Heeley always had plenty of work in Britain, America and further afield. Among other things he designed the pavilion at Caernarvon Castle for the investiture of the Prince of Wales and a ballet version of The Merry Widow (1975), directed by Sir Robert Helpmann in Australia, which transferred to Broadway and the West End, with Dame Margot Fonteyn performing the role of Hanna.

Heeley eventually settled in New York and in later years did much work with Houston Ballet.

In 1994 he became the first recipient of the Theatre Development Fund’s Irene Sharaff Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 1997 he was awarded the United States Institute for Theatre Technology Award for his lifetime contribution to the performing arts.

His partner, Lance Mulcahy, a composer, died in 1998.

Desmond Heeley, born June 1 1931, died June 10 2016