The costumes are coming together. I love costumes. It’s what I like best about acting, dressing up in somebody else’s clothes. Alfie, of course, has Poor Alfie and Rich Alfie. We’re pretty much set for both, now, I believe. Poor Alfie is in trousers, a striped shirt, a leather waistcoat, and a ridiculous dustman’s hat—a brimless black bowl with a long flap behind to keep the crud out of the collar. Rich Alfie, of course, is in his wedding suit: spongebag trousers and black tails. We don’t have anything around my neck at present; we’ll either have to come up with a cravat or a necktie with a nice pin, either of which are easy enough.
The rest of the menfolk were also easy, really. There are the cockneys and the toffs, and each have a look, but really, it’s not all that different from our own kind of clothes. No tights, no breeches, no tunics. Trousers, shirts, jackets. There are cummerbunds, I suppose, which most of us have only worn at weddings, but other than that the differences are the shapes of the things.
Women have a much harder time, of course, because they are women, and women’s clothing has always given them a harder time. The stage isn’t much different from real life like that. Stage dresses are usually easier to take on and off than real dresses, as much of the hook-and-eye crap is fake and backed with Velcro. But it’s got to be the right length, and the right width, and the right color, and have appropriate shoes… audiences notice it when it’s done badly. And they like it when it’s done well.
Pickering, actually, seems to have the toughest changes. Very quick, with layers of things. Eliza, oddly enough, doesn’t seem to have that much of a problem, as she has the intermission to get into her ball gown, and then the next scene she’s still wearing it, and then she has a nice long stretch offstage while we all blather on. Pickering, though, if he’s not going to look like a total slob, has to have a new outfit in every scene (except the after-the-ball one), and he’s in practically every scene, often on at the beginning of the scene and the end. Higgins, too, I suppose, although it matters less if he looks like a slob. I wonder if the addition of the Eliza-and-Freddie bit between the after-the-ball scene at Wimpole Street and the final scene is to allow Higgins to change clothes. Although the addition of the training scene just makes a gratuitous change at the end of the first act. Ah, well.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.