by Alexandra Morphet

Design Ideas and Inspiration The time and place very much shape the costume choices. The play takes place on a summer's evening in New Orleans at the end of the 1930s.
     The other controlling feature of Tennessee Williams's work is its symbolic register. The play is imbued with religious imagery, literary allusions and metaphoric images of savagery and death. There is reference to Melville's white whale. The naming of Dr. Cukrowicz suggests bleached whiteness.
     In this production we have chosen to echo that symbolic resonance by using the color white as the organizing principle of the costumes. White is an ambiguous signifier. Traditionally, white has represented death, but in Christian-influenced society, it has come to signify purity and redemption.
     The silhouette of the 1930s and the European couture clothing of Elsa Schiaparelli have been the inspiration for the design. Schiaparelli is, in fact, mentioned by Catharine in the play. Schiaparelli was a Paris designer involved with the Surrealists and other avant-garde artists. Her uncompromising designs capture the edgy, slightly off-key or over-the-top nature of Tennessee Williams's characters. His characters are living at the boundaries of emotional control. Schiaparelli pushed the boundaries of fashion with her sometimes savage, sometimes outrageous designs, yet she was a designer to the highest of the high society and displayed a refined elegance in her clothing.

Catharine appears in the play dressed in an outfit purchased on her European trip. She has been granted an escorted leave from the asylum to meet with her family, and she is trying to make the best of herself to prepare for the inevitable confrontation with her aunt. She is crossing the line from being merely feminine, youthful, and vulnerable to becoming a woman of character with some fight in her. We can't be sure she will make it.
Mrs. Venable is venerable, as her name suggests. She is a lady of distinction, traveling in the highest reaches of new Orleans society. Yet, we must feel that there is a savage undercurrent beneath the venerable veneer. I have designed an evening cocktail gown that has some swaths of strident color to unbalance the image of studied elegance. As her caped sleeves suggest, she is one version of the ambiguous angel, the protector and destroyer in one.
Dr. Cukrowicz, "Sugar," as he calls himself, must be as white as refined sugar. But again, white is an ambiguous signifier, perhaps a little scary and clinical, perhaps luminescent. We are not sure whether he will be an angel of death or of salvation.
Mrs. Holly is trying very hard to succeed in a social world that is just out of her reach. She is ambitious for her children but finally does not have the wit or class to stake her claim. She is a little giddy and overstated.
George Holly is a preening young wanna-be, expecting and actually believing that he is entitled to a windfall, now that his cousin is dead. He is rather tastelessly wearing some of his latecousing Sebastian's chic clothes.
Miss Foxhill is a figure for the audience. She is an ordinary person who is party to the goings-on. She knows all the secrets, like a spy in a foxhole (cf. "Foxhill"), but she is stuck down there, powerless to do anything.
Sister Felicity brings the symbolic presence of Christianity into the flesh. She is the embodiment of the guardian angel motif, appearing as she does as Catharine's chaperone from the asylum.