It has been a nicely busy Winter season for me as I went straight from Starlight Express into a pantomime! The show - 'A Town Is Bourne' at the Shelley Theatre, Boscombe - was written and directed by James Jones, who also played the Dame, Cherry Winkle. The concept was locally based, an idea on how Bournemouth could have been given its name.
I was fortunate enough to be asked to design for the production, my first pantomime, with stipulations from the director as to a rough idea of the period of influence - an element of the 1840's/1880's - and the colour themes for the three main families. Smocks were also requested for our two smugglers, again based on local history as one of the more infamous smugglers of the region, Gulliver, dressed his men in smocks. This was a fascinating experience for me as it is rare for pantomimes to have so much of a historical element in the look, but it was incredibly interesting meshing the two into a cohesive whole. The underlying theme throughout the pantomime was one of competition - with this in mind I added a visual element to the two parent couples who were the main competitors against one another particularly the fathers. For the Lord I had an ever growing cravat, every time he came on stage his cravat would have grown. For the Captain, I had his epaulettes increasing in size every time he went back on stage. It began very subtly but by the time the finale arrived it was very obvious! I was going to have the two mothers of the competing families also having a visually competing element, with one side having increasingly puffy sleeves and the other an increasingly embellished hat, however at the dress rehearsal the sleeves were not at all noticeable and detracted from the overall look and so I decided to stick with the men on having the visual element to play off each other. We also had our femme fatale, Saffron, the 'showgirl' who was incredible fun to design for.
Initially I was meant to be designing the costumes and wardrobe mistressing as my main roles, and assisting the costume maker, but due to circumstances beyond their control our costume maker had to withdraw from the production at short notice, I agreed to step into the role. Thankfully she was able to lend us waistcoats and a coat for the use of the production, as well as three dresses that could be completely remade as required.
Of the dresses, the blue dress I used for Emily. I changed the neckline and bound it in gold, removing and replacing the sleeves for a different style. The skirt was coming away at the waist but instead of removing it I added a new skirt over the top in a different fabric, leaving the original skirt underneath for a fuller effect to the skirt.
The other two dresses I had the two 'mothers' wear under their costumes as additional undergarments in order to again add more fullness to the skirts and additional structure in the bodice as I did not want to use corsets.
All the rest of the costumes were made from scratch.
Working on this show gave me the opportunity to work with fantastic makeup artist Sophie May Melville, who did an outstanding job with makeup and hair.
Cherry Winkle was without doubt my favourite to design as this was my first Dame costume! She was Perry the fisher mans mother so despite the colour theme of silver and grey for the colour theme of the Winkles this gave me a lot to work with, with pink, blue and green as the accent colours, I was able to make this a much more lively costume! The fish you may recognise as well, they are indeed the Spamalot fish I made for the number 'Fisch Schlapping'! The hat was also a new one for me as I haven't made any hats before, only masks and headpieces. Due to time constraints and not knowing at that point what the wig was going to be like I bought a fabric hat base, in pink, and built onto that enabling it to be pinned to the wig. The chest and hat shells and fish were stuffed with sponge.
Dame Cherry Winkle
The hat, with the wig sourced and styled by makeup artist Sophie Melville!
Perry, principal boy, and Emily, principal girl
Toby and Beth
Special thanks to Amy Cox for very generously donating an afternoon to help me by adding all of the bias binding to the Toby jacket!
The Tregonwells
Captain Tregonwell (Left) is based on a combination of an 1840's and an 1880's naval captains uniform, with the first of his five gold epaulettes (Epaulette set 5 in top group photo). Lady Tregonwell (Right) is one of the two with the secondary dress beneath for added structure.
Lord and Lady Tapps-Gervis
Lord Tapps-Gervis without his coat, with the first of his five cravats (Cravat 5 in top group photo) Lady Tapps-Gervis is the second of the two dresses with the secondary dress beneath for added structure.
Chris Creeke
One of our two smugglers but unfortunately I did not manage to get an individual shot of the other Creeke brother, only in the group shot at the top of the post!
Saffron
And lastly but by no means least, Saffron, our femme fatale, the 'showgirl' villain of the piece who was definitely one of my very favourite costumes to make!
In terms of wardrobe mistressing, the cast were wonderful to work with as was our venue, the Shelley Theatre, and Sophie was a wonderful makeup artist to work alongside. The show required very little in the way of changes and repairs, and so only required myself and my backstage kit on costume during the show.
