Part 3 of the story of making the costumes for Seussical the
Musical starts off with the Whos from Whoville. Dr Seuss’s original books show
these as little furry creatures with strange hairdos and pointy up noses,
although recent animation and films have depicted them as people, often wearing
1950s style clothing – which influenced my designs.
In Seussical, The Cat uses his imagination to zoom in on the
tiny speck of dust that turns out to be The Planet of Who. In the song Here on Who, Mr and Mrs Mayor and
the rest of the Whos describe their lives and their tiny town, and sing about
an imminent War and the gusts of wind that blow the dust speck around. They beg Horton to help protect them and
their very small and fragile planet, and Horton promises to do so, saying “A
persons a person, no matter how small”.
And of course, I can’t forget Jo-Jo, the Mayor’s son – whose
imagination and escapades with The Cat get him into lots of trouble before he
emerges as the hero and save the day – but more of that later. Egged on by The Cat, Jo-Jo imagines Fish
swimming in McElligot's Pool when he is taking a bath - It's Possible. When Jo-Jos latest “thinks” flood the house,
his parent’s patience is broken and Jo-Jo is sent to The Military – an academy for
difficult boys run by General Genghis Khan Schmitz.
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| Mr Mayor and the Whos from Whoville (Copyright Peter Cook) |
Louise Ryan, our Musical Director wanted bright primary
colours for our Whos, so I bought metres
and metres of red, blue and yellow lycra and show satin to make 1950’s styles
full circle skirts for the “girl” Whos. Very simple to make and elasticated
waists meant I didn’t need to do lots of time consuming fittings. The tops were based on lycra leotards (again
easy fit), with added jackets or cardigans for the older girls.
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| Mr & Mrs Mayor (Copyright Peter Cook) |
Mrs Mayor was played
by the lovely
Libby Rogers. I wanted Mrs
Mayor to be more “grown up“ than the other adult Whos – a combination of mumsy
and 1950’s formal. I tracked down a lovely red tailored Karen Millen jacket which looked gorgeous on
Libby, but although it was a cheap second hand buy and had a couple of
marks on it, I did feel a bit bad adapting it for a costume! Libby added a lovely flower to a bun in her
hair – perfect.
Mr Mayor needed to look formal as well – I sourced a great
Boating style blue jacket with red and white stripes and teamed it with an
old yellow rugby shirt and cheap working men’s canvas trousers in bright red. Rhodri Denton, who played
the Mayor was delighted that his outfit wasn’t lycra or satin, but wasn’t too
impressed with the straw boater I added as a final touch – fair play, he wore
it and it looked great.
For the Whos, I wanted every costume to be slightly
different, had great fun adding bindings, frills and flounces in different
colours and styles and I found some brilliant big buttons with polka dots and
stripes. As I finished each costume, I
hung it off the picture rail in my hall, and I used to love walking past and
seeing the gorgeous colour combinations. These costumes were cute, especially
when I added some coloured and stripy tights to the mix.
Being very lazy, I didn’t measure many of the cast – I
relied on the forgiving nature of lycra and elastic. I gave the teenage girls
playing Adult Whos - Mari, Sophie,
Libby, Laura, Alex and Chloe - a batch of elasticated waist satin circle skirts, lycra leotards and trimmed jackets
in different sizes. They spent a very giggly half hour swopping round
to get the best fit and colour combinations – thanks girls.
The younger Whos
-
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| Twirly Skirts & Stripy Tights |
Sophie, Nia, Sally, Ellie, Celyn, Lottie, Maddy, Arwen and Declan had lycra outfits that matched the colours of the adults.
Of course the girls pounced on their full circle skirts at rehearsals
and kept twirling round and got so dizzy that they nearly fell over! Directors
not happy with me!
For the boy costumes I made straight leg jazz trousers with pleated
fronts and lycra shirts with 1950s collars and big buttons.
Many of the Whos had bought their own primary coloured
shoes, but for others I dyed some old satin and canvas ballet shoes (I did this
for a lot of the Jungle Animals too). I didn’t have enough time to paint each
pair individually, so I soaked them in batches of different colour dyes using a
solution made from powdered fabric dyes. It was nearly a disaster when some of
the inner soles came apart as the glue dissolved – but luckily the shoes
themselves stayed intact and could still be worn. Whew!
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| Jo Jo in the bath tub (Copyright Peter Cook) |
Jo Jo was played by Daniel Williams and this is the only
outfit I didn’t touch at all - a friend of Daniel’s mum did his, and she did a
fantastic job in recreating the perfect
look for our troubled teenage boy. Check
out his top – each of the blue bands was individually sewn on to a white
t-shirt get the right width stripes. Brilliant!
Some of the younger Whos and Jungle Animals had a number of
roles in the show with very quick side of stage changes. This first happened with the fish in
McElligot's Pool. The choreographers, Natasha and Chloe Evans, had created a
lovely flowing dance for this song and we needed costumes that worked with
this. However, we didn’t have the facilities (or time) for complete costume
changes so I needed to have base costumes that could be very quickly “adapted”
into other roles. The simplest solution was to create flowing outfits in
stretchy lycra that they could just pop over the kids heads. However, I was
working with Whos in primary colours and some Jungles in gold and
peach! I decided that each fish would
fantastical rather than realistic, in different styles and colours that went
well with their main costumes. I made some floaty “dresses” in pinks, oranges, yellows and blues, depicting
a jellyfish with mesh streamers, a silvery blue tropical fish, a winged angel
fish and an anemone with scalloped edges. Others were in primary colours,
using a psychedelic swirly lycra to create a vivid flatfish and a foiled lycra
for a shark with pointy fins on its
back. I couldn't track track down a
photo – they must have swam too fast for the photographer!
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| The General introduces Jo Jo to the Military Academy |
|
General Genghis Khan Schmitz was played by Joe W. I bought an authentic army
jacket off eBay and added lots of glitzy braid and tassels. I was going to use some
of my great grandfather’s Boer war medals, but these were very heavy and I was
concerned they may fall off and get lost. I did use some of his lighter
“medals” though, that he had been awarded for long service to the National
Savings Scheme!!!
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| Cadets in The Military (Copyright Peter Cook) |
The Cadet costumes were simple – these were Who kids who had
been sent to “Military School” so we just added khaki green t-shirts with
Schmitz printed in gold.
(Note the plastic swords were issued to each cadet as
they marched onto stage – to prevent the older cast members stealing them to
play-fight in the wings!)
Gosh
– this has been a long blog - next time I’ll be having a visit from the Birds
which I promise will be shorter!
(For those of you with younger Seuss fans (or those who are
just young at heart) I’ve found this fab
Dr Seuss website with games and
activities)
The
Old Button is more than happy for you to use these costume ideas as
inspiration for your own production.
Pinning through Pinterest is fine as long as you credit
The Old Button but please respect the copyright of the photos, and do
not reproduce in other forms without permission.
