Critics give us a twirl in frock shock

It’s not every day of the year I sit through a show and end up trying on the costumes after the curtain call. Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t hanging around on the off-chance of a free swagger in the silken schmatter.

Nor am I looking to step up to the plate as an understudy for La Cage aux Folles. But as I tried to execute a modest exit from the Brunswick Gallery in the Russell Square shopping centre last night, I was hauled back my companion, fashionista Georgina Godley, and instructed not to be a spoilsport.

After all, as was all too shockingly obvious, Donald Hutera, ballet critic of The Times, was already giving us a monumental twirl in a floor-length silver grey coat with coloured flashings that made him look like a shameless reject from Strictly Come Dancing.

So I sullenly adopted an unsuitable garment and subjected myself to the derisive hoots of my friend and the unconvincing compliments of takis, the lower case Greek designer and installation artist whose work this all was.   

His show, Forgotten Peacock, had been touted as a new interactive fashion installation with innovative video, lighting and sound design. I’d been hooked by this bait of blurb. Especially as I’ve often wondered why the flamboyant parades of the Milan and Paris catwalks are not adopted more often in the language of musical theatre.

Only the Broadway production of Tim Rice and Elton John’s Aida springs to mind as an example of this happening. In all honesty, takis’s show is a small-scale, slightly disappointing low key event. The all-male models are volunteer amateurs in whose company Donald Hutera was not really embarrassed, apart from the silly grin he wore on his face as he twirled incorrigibly on.

But it was very interesting to see how takis brings waists and shoulders into play in his designs, and also compliments the gliding line of the body in a way that most theatrical costumes these days simply do not.

The best theatre costumes are made at the RSC, but designers like Tom Piper (Michael Boyd’s regular associate) want the broken down look, the studied shabbiness of the everyday, the aggressive realism of worn denim and ripped leather.

And how often to we really notice the costumes in the theatre anyway? Usually when there is nothing else much going on, as in the recent stage version of Girl with a Pearl Earring. How very good and beautifully coloured and textured seemed the costumes designed by Fotini Dimou.  

Actually, that show served as a real wake up call to me in the costume department. For the very next evening I went to see Creditors at the Donmar Warehouse, where Anna Chancellor sports one of the most beautiful costumes I’ve ever seen on the London stage. And guess what? It, too, is designed by Fotini Dimou.

The woman’s a genius, at least as good as my new friend takis at the Brunswick, and I note that she’s designing the costumes for the new David Hare play Gethsemane at the National.

Will we be getting an unblinkered eyeful of what Tamsin Greig is wearing, or will we be screwed to our seats by the cut and thrust of Sir David’s polemical argufying? Perhaps it’s high time we tried both experiences simultaneously. After all, Hare is himself married to someone fully versed in the clothes line — the great Nicole Fahri.

It would be really interesting to see Nicole on a Platform at the NT with Fotini and takis discussing the different requirements of designing for the catwalk and the stage — and who knows, Donald might carry on twirling to illustrate their bullet points.