The Two Gentlemen of Verona
The Two Gentlemen of Verona - William Shakespeare
Richard Burton Theatre Company, Summer 2025
Costume designs for a contemporary Shakespeare production, with a short design-process and small budget, with the help of one costume assistant.
Director
Patricia Logue
Costume Designer
Isobel Blackburn
Set Designer
Lo Money
Lighting Designer
Gabriella Thomas
Photographer
Lo Money
Designing
On this show, I worked with the director’s concept of a contemporary setting, with students having a gap year in Monaco. We aimed to create a design theme of “old money” and “public school kids” through the costumes.
Creating this theme through the costume was a challenge due to the small budget so most costumes were sourced.
Another challenge was in the fact that some characters (Valentine, Proteus and Julia) had dual or triple casting where costumes needed to read as the same character.
The design process was kept quick and efficient; I created mood boards for each character which allowed flexibility in the costumes owing to what could be sourced on budget.
The Process
Due to the small budget, most of the costumes were sourced from the college’s costume store, and the rest were sourced from charity shops and second-hand sources with a focus on sustainable costume.
Many costumes required alterations, these included taking in trousers and skirts, altering shoulder straps, and fixing accessories such as sunglasses to better fit performers.
There were minimal makes on this show due to time and budget, however, one of them was a gold sarong for the character of Sylvia, and others were a logo created and printed onto polo tops by my assistant.
I undertook fitting room set up and costume admin tasks such as creating the costume plot.
Something that needed particular attention was the double and triple casting, where we needed to make sure the costumes were aptly portraying a singular character across different performers.
