Colours of the night

By SUSAN BUDD

The damp air of Hamilton's WestpacTrust Theatre in Clarence St is full of first-night nerves on the afternoon of the opening of A Midsummer Night's Dream, the inaugural production of the New Zealand Actors Company. Public expectation runs high for a show featuring actors well known from television's Shortland Street and a host of talented young actors.

But the theatre has soggy acoustics and microphones have to be placed at the front of the stage. Robyn Malcolm, playing Titania, has strained tendons in her leg and her dance steps have had to be re-choreographed. Costume designer Tracey Collins is making Malcolm a glitzy costume.

She seems unaffected by the stress of those around her and says, "This has been the most interesting process I have worked with."

She began with an open mind, apart from the concepts of three worlds: the court, the mechanicals (workmen) and the fairies.

The naturalism of the mechanicals contrasts strongly with the surrealistic world of the fairies, a domain where she saw complex characters embodying pagan magic.

"When rehearsals started, I went every day to character and improvisation workshops and spent the first three weeks observing and talking to the actors," Collins says.

"As a costume designer, sometimes you do not even meet the actors. I feel much closer to them in this show."

Theseus, the Duke of Athens, played by Tim Balme, is mad, powerful and dangerous — a fascist, Collins says. His costume is a blend of the Red Baron and Sergeant Pepper — red jodhpurs, a jacket with heavy gold braiding and huge gold epaulettes, all topped with a white flying-helmet and goggles.

His Amazon bride, Hippolyta (Robyn Malcolm), Collins envisages as a captive queen, bringing her own world into the play of worlds within worlds. She is wild and so has been garbed in a fetish costume of leather, feathers and big boots.

The lovers Helena and Demetrius, often prominent in the play, are vibrantly costumed in Ponsonby Rd chic.

For the role of Helena, Tandi Wright transformed her straight chestnut hair into very blond curls.

"She needed to be blond," Collins insists, "and she is leggy because she runs. She's in lavender because red or pink are wrong. She is quietly glamorous with one big aspiration — to get her man, Demetrius."

Demetrius, played by fourth-year law student Andrew Smith, is a more glitzy Country Road/art director type in ice-blue trousers and rich blue velvet jacket.

"Hermia [Ingrid Park] is the dux who has always had everything her own way, the most popular girl in class, and she is not getting her own way. So I have gone more classical, but in bold colours of teal and red. She is European and stylish, French perhaps." Her lover, Lysander (Iaheto Ah Hi), is the groovy, muso type in smart casual gear of earthy reds.

The fairies could be entrants for the Wearable Art Awards or creations of Heironymus Bosch in huge, surreal confections of latex and net.

Cobweb (Lucy Schmidt) is a huge spider dropping shreds of web. Mustardseed (Anne Budd) has a scorpion carapace, deformed limbs on one side of her body, a shocking red wig and fan, and a passing resemblance to a flamenco dancer.

Peaseblossom (Willie Plumb) and (Mote) Neill Duncan have big, frothy white headdresses atop their spare frames.

Puck, played by Stephen Lovatt — with stiff and streamlined red wig and hennaed face — has the appearance of a medieval demon.

In his dual role as Oberon, Tim Balme is half satyr, with black leather chaps fringed with deep green horses hair. His torso is more serpentine, in bronze snakeskin which ends in a lizard's ruff.

Titania is moonshine to his shadow in a column of white sequins.

The mechanicals — an ageing hippie, mechanic, carpentry teacher and weaver — are more close to home, with a Country and Western feel.