Dressed for Excess: The Frocks of 'Irma Vep'

Over-the-Top Spoof Keeps Costumers, Actors on Their Toes

If Scarlett O'Hara had crashed Truman Capote's Black and White Ball, she might have resembled actor Brad Oscar in a key scene from Arena Stage's "The Mystery of Irma Vep." Playing the vivacious Lady Enid, the newly married mistress of Mandacrest -- an absurdly creepy country estate, possibly inhabited by vampires -- Oscar sweeps onstage dressed in a veritable Niagara of jet-and-ivory ruffles, his head crowned with a pale, gauzy hat about the circumference of a truck tire. The outfit is so insanely elaborate, it offers up its own joke and punch line, crafted from fabric rather than words.

The dress is just one of the eye-popping garments that designer David Zinn has devised for Charles Ludlam's frenetic spoof, running at Arena Stage in Crystal City through July 13. Ranging from a plus-fours suit -- for Lady Enid's secretive, scholarly husband, Lord Edgar -- to safari attire and a Egyptian djellaba, to a spectrum of garish gowns, the costumes reflect the allusive, gleefully ludicrous aesthetic of the play, which lampoons Gothic thrillers, early 20th-century monster movies, "Wuthering Heights," "Macbeth" and Hitchcock's "Rebecca," just to name a few targets.

The melodramatic plot involves a slew of eccentric characters -- including a shady, one-legged handyman and a housekeeper with a working knowledge of werewolves -- but Ludlam, founder of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, intended the play as a vehicle for two actors (in the show's 1984 premiere, it was himself and partner Everett Quinton). The performers are thus obliged to execute myriad lightning-paced wig-and-costume changes in the wings. Tellingly, in the Arena production -- which is directed by Rebecca Bayla Taichman, and which stars J. Fred Shiffman alongside Oscar -- there are twice as many offstage dressers (four) as performers.

Zinn factored the whirlwind changes into his designs, which he and Taichman agreed should look beautiful and, simultaneously, utterly preposterous. "Really pretty -- and completely retarded" was the description the bearded, bespectacled designer cheerfully supplied as he gave a reporter a tour of the costumes, just hours before the show's first preview. He was accompanied by Arena's longtime costume shop manager, Joseph P. Salasovich, who coordinates the drapers and other in-house staff who turn designs into apparel.

Tinkering was still going on in the dressing room areas: A black jacket hung on a mannequin, awaiting the acrylic paint that would give it that just-off-the-rainy-moors look. But it was Lady Enid's rococo frocks that loomed foremost in the men's awareness.

"We're into mileage with the amount of ruffles you're seeing -- not yardage," Salasovich emphasized as various ballooning vestments were offered for inspection. A single poppy-red number, he pointed out, used 60 yards of taffeta and organza. (By contrast, the men said, a typical ballgown skirt might use 12 yards of cloth).

Zinn -- whose extensive credits include operas and the Broadway musical "Xanadu" -- explained that the layered gowns, with their ornate frills and underskirts in contrasting colors, were intended to keep viewers baffled about the quick-change logistics. "What I didn't want the show to be was a series of dresses that closed up the back," he said. "Because then the audience gets what it is: 'Oh, there's a big piece of Velcro up the back.' " (Some costume fastenings do use Velcro, but others rely on snaps and magnets.)

But Byzantine designs present their own challenges. A dress with a bustle proved troublesome because the costume shop could not locate 40 yards of the purple-and-green wool plaid Zinn had selected. "We were literally on the phone with Scotland," Salasovich recalled.

The situation threatened the intricate color scheme devised by Zinn and Taichman, who are collaborating for the first time. (Taichman courted the designer for the project because, she said, "I knew that he had a sense of the extravagant that I was looking for.") Inspired by the Crystal City venue -- a former movie theater -- the director wanted the show's visual aspects to evoke black-and-white and early color films. The hues of Lady Enid's gowns, she said, resemble "when they colorize old movies, and the colors look too bright."

On board with Taichman's plan, but hindered by the international drought of purple plaid, Zinn ultimately opted to cut the bustle dress from a loud yellow tartan (for the record, the Clan MacLeod's), trimmed with pink tassels. That change meant color-editing a yellow dress slated for another scene. Lady Enid, Zinn felt, "wouldn't repeat herself."

The episode wasn't the only snag in the costuming process. A notion to create a campy outfit from beaded curtains was scuttled after a shady Internet vendor absconded with Arena's money. But trimming a violet kimono with three shades of ostrich feathers and sparkly Lurex proved straightforward, after Zinn visited a custom boa-maker in New York's fashion district. "There are still people whose job it is to make feather boas," Salasovich marveled. "Thank God!"

The textiles, in some ways, are just the tip of the iceberg. Because Oscar and Shiffman play characters of both genders and vastly different physiques, many of the costumes incorporate padding and quasi-sculptural elements. What with the fabric's weight (Enid's black-and-white dress tips the scales at 25 pounds or so) and the wigs (reinforced with felt, to withstand the quick changes; T. Tyler Stumpf is wig designer), the actors wind up rather temperature-disadvantaged.

"Summer in D.C. gets a little hot," Salasovich observed. "So all of the clothes have built-in cooling systems" -- hidden pockets for ice packs.

Now that the costumes are finished, the production's dressers/wardrobe crew maintain them: inspecting them before and after each show; preparing them for the actors; tracking them on and offstage; cleaning them as needed (inner portions of the costumes can be detached and washed); steaming creases out of all those ruffles; and so on.

The crew (Dori Beau Seigneur, Amanda Barrett Smith, Elena Flores and Gerri Ford) started drilling with the actors at the first rehearsal, initially using muslin mock-ups of the clothes. The prolonged practice time was essential, even though Oscar (Broadway's "The Producers," etc.) and Shiffman (Arena's "Cabaret," etc.) have done a quick-change or two in their day. "It's not something that gets any easier," Shiffman confessed. "It's dark back there" in a show's wing area. "You have limited space, and you really have to get it down to a science."

"Every costume change becomes its own choreographic event," Oscar said of the extreme makeovers in "Irma Vep." But it helps, he said, that as an actor, "much of what you do is muscle memory." Onstage, too, "the joy of truly being able to let go and perform is when the body knows what it's doing," he noted.

Both actors are thankful that, while they yank dresses and haberdashery on and off in seconds flat, they wear the same footwear throughout the show.

"Changing shoes is pretty much out of the question," Oscar said, in a grateful tone.