Usually, the best costumes are the ones that hardly register, the ones that blend with the lights, sound and stagecraft to create the seamless illusion of good theater. Sometimes, though, the pageantry and dress-up inherent in any stage show become the point, as in director and madman Barry Kyle's take on The Cure at Troy, Seamus Heaney's adaptation of Sophocles' Philoctetes. Here, the clothes added layers of meaning. Because this strangest of tragedies concerns the tail end of a long desert war, Kyle and the UMKC graduate theater department set it in modern dress: Greek soldiers wore fatigues, the chorus emerged in backpacks and prom dresses, and Odysseus — cast here as a wheedling politician — was, stylewise, a one-man coalition of the willing, in American cowboy boots, a fussy British ascot and robes straight from a Marrakesh market. Later, a costume change drew an actual gasp from the crowd: Wily Odysseus, now speaking in a pinched-up imitation of George W. Bush, paraded from the wings in a head-to-toe burqa made from American flags. Stranger still, it was beautifully made.
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An award for best costumes with no mention of the actual designer? The degree to which the Pitch continually ignores the artistic contributions of the designers on nearly every theatrical production they review is astounding, but has never urged me to comment until now. The designer of mention here is Kate Mincer. She recently graduated from the MFA program at UMKC and is now trying her hand at design in NYC.
An award for best costumes with no mention of the actual designer? The degree to which the Pitch continually ignores the artistic contributions of the designers on nearly every theatrical production they review is astounding, but has never urged me to comment until now. The designer of mention here is Kate Mincer. She recently graduated from the MFA program at UMKC and is now trying her hand at design in NYC.
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