Musical Theatricalities!!!

Has anyone heard of the musical Return to the Forbidden Planet?

We did it as the Lent term musical in my first year, and it was SUCH FUN! "Shakespeare's long lost rock-and-roll masterpiece" pretty much says it all... (Look it up on itunes and you'll see what I mean! ;-D)

Basically, it's pretty much the biggest show of the year, and I'd applied to be costume assistant... It was my SIXTH show that term and I was exhausted and got really ill in the middle of term and hadn't noticed that the actual costume designer had done nothing...

So, with A WEEK to go, he pulled out, citing wanting to run for CUSU (our student's union) as reasons he couldn't do it... Basically elections were at the same time. LAMEST EXCUSE EVER!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I was suddenly costume designer for a show that went up in a week, with no costumes made and 22 people waiting to be able to practice in them...

Let's just say, it was one of the most stressful, but exhilerating weeks of my life... We basically redesigned the whole costume concept, and I roped in an absolute horde of people - mostly techies, more used to hanging lanterns, carpentry and programming sound desks than to sewing machines, mountains of pink fabric and miles of ribbon - to help with endless sewing, sticking badges onto shirts, and glitter-glue-ing late into the night! 

And it ended up beautiful! We got rave reviews and I made a tonne of new friends in the process... Silver linings eh!

This is the show where one of the boys' pants split mid-show and gaffa tape was the only option... My favourite costumes were definitely the neon pink dress we made for the lead, out of UV spangly material, from scratch... Oh, and the cute little shirt-shifts we made for the girl pilots... They had ribbon hems and were just So Darling!

The most fun thing to make was the hat for the robot (bottom right and left above). It was a colander we'd bought from Tesco, spray-painted silver, with millions of little LED lights all over the place. It was fantastic, and I will be forever indebted to my best mate, Will, for sorting all those fiddly little blinking lights, when he was supposed to be orchestrating the building of the entire set (as he was Technical Director, so supposed to be in charge of everything Else!)... Hooray for girlie charm eh! ;-D

And, of course, the necessary costume wench pic... Look at me in my boys shirt and red lippie! Odd angle, and rather ill, but Too Cool For School anyway eh ;-D - can't believe this was 2 years ago! Gawd I feel so OLD!

Hope you like the pictures! 

Xxxc

Photos are either my own, or copyright Charles Arrowsmith and Damian Robertson. Poster copyright Esh Alladi. Thanks on this post have to be extended to WW, SM, PN, JD, H, PMD, HO, EA, HS, AB, SP, RL, The B, Spangly G, R, HG, The WHOLE S.O.D. and many many more...