From Page to Stage: Rose Mundy

This week in From Page to Stage we return to Minotaur Theatre’s production of Brian Frail’s Dancing at Lughnasa with Rose Mundy played by Eavann Mallon. I loved designing for this character and found it really interesting to play with her innocence and naivety alongside her desire to be independent and be perceived as more adult than she is. There is a suggestion in Frail’s play that Rose has a developmental disability, which means she acts and thinks at a much less mature level than the rest of her sisters, so this is where her innocence and naivety stem from. Her sisters have, understandably, grown extremely protective of Rose and have sheltered her a lot, which has led to her being even less aware of the world around her than she already might have been. However, there is definitely a part of Rose that wants to rebel against her sisters and be seen as mature which is manifested through her desire to meet up with married, Danny Bradley, who she believes is in love with her.

As a basis for the character I researched women in 1930s Ireland to get a general sense of the style, this way I could understand the style and fashion of rural Irish women of that era in order to alter it slightly to match Rose’s personality more closely. I noted that it was mostly just extremely practical, understandably, and the length of dresses was all below the knee. Almost every woman seemed to be wearing an apron and after discussions with Irish co-director, Catherine McFall, about the weather in that part of Ireland during the summer it was decided that the women would still be wearing knitted jumpers and cardigans as the temperatures, although warmer than in winter, still tend to be colder than a summer in the south of England that I am used to.

After getting this base knowledge I worked with my assistant designer, Nyree Williams and the directors to develop the style for Rose. We thought that mismatching her outfit would help single her out from the other girls as different and younger. She wore wellies at all times, even indoors and while searching for her outfit we found a night gown that Nyree and I thought would work really well with the sense that Rose just wore whatever she felt comfortable in, not necessarily what was seen as ‘proper dress’. Colour wise I wanted to keep within a pastel palette for Rose to keep with her innocence and a suggestion of childhood. So I kept with baby blue and baby pink with anything else sticking within greys and black just to complete outfits.

Rose was the only sister to have two distinctly different looks during the play, one for her main outfit and one for her meeting with Danny Bradley. For the main look, like I said earlier, we had the nightgown, a jumper (I wanted to ensure there was something knitted in her outfit as she spends most of the play knitting with her sister, Agnes, so I thought they should both have knitted items that they could have made themselves) and wellies, keeping it simple and still a little mismatched. The second outfit needed to be slightly more thought out as she had obviously specifically chosen this outfit for meeting a boy she is in love with. Here I decided to design the look to be closer to that of her sisters with the colours not quite hitting the mark together, to still maintain the mismatched look but give it a slightly more ‘put-together’ feel. So here I gave her a shirt and cardigan combination which we found in the UEA costume store and then I made a black skirt to imitate her eldest sister, Kate’s, as if she’d borrowed it from her wardrobe. This was my first time making a skirt like this and I think it worked well for the look, although the fabric choice wasn’t quite the right one I think it worked in the end. With the shirt and cardigan I still kept within the pale/pastel range of pink and blue to maintain the childlike sense to her character and we gave her a pair of shoes more similar to Kate’s as well.

The final touch for Rose’s costume was her fish pin gifted to her by Danny. This was a challenging feat as we were unable to acquire a metal fish pin so I had to fashion one out of tin foil. Had we had more time I would have loved to have found something a bit more appropriate but I think it worked well enough for the show and added the little flash of silver needed to suggest the gift being there.

Along with Eavann’s great acting that perfectly portrayed Rose I think the costume worked well to bring forth her character to the audience, especially during the scenes where Rose is less talkative in the corner knitting with Agnes.