I’ve known I’m to do the costumes for some months, but because of the way the year’s gone I couldn’t get started as early as Id’ve liked. I was doing Twelfth Night for the RSC with Ian Judge and John Gunter (director & set designer) in May/June. John & I then went straight onto The Devil’s Disciple (Shaw) at the Royal National Theatre [RNT] in June/July, which was rehearsing at the same time as English National Opera’s Don Quichotte (Massenet) which the three of us were doing directly before this.

It wasn’t therefore until the Orchestral Dress Rehearsals of Don Quichotte that I managed to stay home for long enough to consider drawing – but ironically even this wasn’t devoted to Christmas Carol as I had to do chorus drawings for Scottish Opera’s Figaro (which doesn’t rehearse until the new year, but the workshops want to get the chorus finished before Christmas to spread the workload.) Plus we were also moving en famille from London to Wiltshire!

Therefore I’ve had no proper meetings with Ian, nor were there ever those ideal few weeks of research and gestation. ‘Leisurely lunches’ were limited to a couple of sandwiches as we tried to catch up with existing problems. While drawing up the Figaro chorus I managed to do a few sketches for Christmas Carol, tho as it happens I don’t think a single one of them was used! Still, at least it got me started.

So as not to be interrupted by visits to the art shop, I order large quantities of very good paper and get all my reference books, but then realise that since there was no time to draw in advance I had better make a virtue of necessity and make drawings that are caricatures of the actors. As a result the makers will have to start on the costumes before I’ve finished thinking about them properly. I just hope experience, professionalism and goodwill will get us all through it.

10 Oct First Day of Rehearsal
Go in to the RSC Rehearsal Room in Clapham, take Polaroids of all the actors, and come home with a list to start drawing. In true RSC tradition, on Day One some of the smaller parts are still uncast, and most of the minor characters still 46unallocated!

11 Oct
Draw like a dervish – there’s a costume showing in less than a week for which I have to produce over a hundred designs. I decide to work to a simple colour scheme, where Dickensian ‘real life’ is in black and white, and all the fantasies are in colour. The central ideas are fairly clear in my mind, it’s now a question of keeping a clear focus on the principal characters while allowing the subsidiary ones enough visual life to ensure they do appear onstage as ‘real’ people and don’t make the actors look like extras in a bad film. In order to think my way round the whole cast I decide to complete outline figure shapes before deciding on colour and decorative detailing.

17 Oct
Take the drawings in and show them round, gibbering with exhaustion, my shoulders as tight as a tennis racquet, but the actors like them very much and it’s an exciting morning. John Gunter shows slides of the set. He must be in a very similar state, though he’d had to start work much sooner for obvious reasons. The actors are really thrilled … and so they jolly well should be.

20 Oct
A company of 22 has rapidly grown into a list of character parts which is hovering around the 100 mark as all are now playing about 4 parts each. The Wardrobe is beginning to panic now they realise the full scale of it, and so am I. I decide to get ahead with choosing the fabrics (starting with the Fezzywigs because I’ve decided that they’ll be seen as if through rose-tinted spectacles, ie everyone in shades of pink) but I don’t know if I am very effective because it’s tricky considering the second phase when you’re still only halfway through the first one.

24 Oct
There are now two supervisors on the show: Carrie Baylis at Stratford and Jill Ross in Clapham. The Stratford wardrobe is doing the Fezzywig party and more unconventional men’s tailoring. We can’t outwork this to non-theatrical tailors since the caricature element in the designs involves body sculpture (ie padding) and standard men’s tailors can never get the hang of this - literally. The ladies’ cutter is busy with the Fezzywig ladies: so we’re frantically scouring town for out-workers to make virtually everyonelse.

Every time I try to count the makers there’s someone new. We’ve divided it up so there’s some stylistic coherence, for instance one person, is doing all the Cratchits, and another is handling all the Ghosts.

5 Nov
Been trying to find enough time at home to finish the Christmas Carol drawings. Yesterday I coloured in and finished off The Ghost of Christmas Present and the scene where Scrooge is rejected by Belle, and also where Belle-as-an-old-woman discusses Scrooge with her daughter and granddaughter. I decided to do them all in blue – because of the connotations of the colour … blue-belle, blue stocking. Young Scrooge is therefore in navy and Belle herself is in a lilacy harebell blue, and the daughter is in another shade of blue with some tartan as are the little girls. Ian for once misses the point of the matching frock and thinks I have run out of ideas.

Later in the day to Clapham where Ian is very pleased with what I’ve done. We discuss my idea for Teeny Tiny Scrooge at the beginning and Middle-Size Scrooge-as-a-boy. The audience must perceive them as wearing the same garments in order for the continuity to work. I suggest young Scrooge might’ve been sent to school with hand-me-down clothes far too big for him and then when he’s collected several years later (his mother having presumably died or his father relented or whatever) his clothes are worn out and now far too small. It’s important when designing a costume to have an idea based on character-motivation, be it fatness or the colour or a little story such as this … tho too many ideas per costume is usually self-defeating.

Afterwards I go upstairs to the Wardrobe to chose more fabrics, as my ideas about colour are much clearer now I’ve had a chance to finish more of the drawings. A recent production meeting has landed me with a considerable problem to be solved over the weekend: three big sequences in the play involve the whole company as a Chorus, but they’re each topped-and-tailed by quick-changes.

In one, the Chorus describing London life leads directly into the Cratchits. This is not so tricky as the Cratchits can presumably be dressed as themselves, but after it there’s a long and very complicated sequence of miners and fishermen in far flung places singing Christmas carols with hardly any time to change. Then, following a film-like dissolve, Lo and Behold we’re in Scrooge’s nephew’s party with four girls in huge 1850s crinolines with the chaps in evening dress, who were miners seconds before in another part of the stage. Obviously they’re not going to have complete costumes for the intermediate stages but I have to find some way of making them look convincingly Victorian, and convincingly ‘not grand’ … so I shall wait for that to come to me over the weekend.

I also have to find a way of dealing with the Ghost of Christmas Present because the actor, John Caine, got impatient when we said there wasn’t enough money to have his feet made professionally and was found in the wardrobe cutting some toes out of foam rubber, which he has attached to his buskins. I shall need a way of tactfully improving them. We could at least buy him some decent foam rubber that isn’t green.

8 Nov
Do the rounds of the Hire Wardrobes. Rather than waste a lot of time and money making costumes for the many small parts who could still get cut, we went to Berman’s (or Angel’s as I must get used to calling it) in the morning, where we hunted through rails and rails of old clothes, trying not to cough. Tho we didn’t find a lot, we did find armloads of hats which will be very very useful because of the problems I can see coming with our rather Museum-minded hatter. We also found some good, rather skimpy frock coats which will be handy for the Chorus and Paupers.

After lunch to the other principal period hirer, CosProp, coincidentally also in Camden. They didn’t have much because of the number of big 19thC films out at the moment – Martin Chuzzlewit hasn’t come back, Pride & Prejudice was only just being checked in and there’s various Dickensian Christmas shows around, whose Wardrobe Supervisors have got there first.

I meet Lindy Hemming who’s designing a Bond film and says she hasn’t any bodies to fit yet because the company’s frightened to contract actors in advance in case the schedule changes and they demand to be paid. As a result she’s sitting there twiddling her costume plots, trying to choose costumes for people she’s never seen. Until it goes into full production she can’t do anything very sensible but the moment it does everybody’ll start shouting at her because the costumes aren’t ready!

We find some quite good shoes in the local Camden shops. I quite like using real shoes where possible because theatre-made shoes can come out looking like surgical boots. The ones in the shops are both cheaper and better if the shape you’re looking for happens to be in fashion.

9 Nov
Three days of fittings. Absolutely exhausting. The first morning is completely wasted as the Stratford Wardrobe are stuck in traffic, so all the fittings have to be crammed in two at a time, at half-hourly intervals – not an ideal situation as it’s well-nigh impossible to concentrate on two costumes simultaneously for a whole afternoon. Especially since there are some costumes where I wonder if the cutter has even so much as glanced at my drawing. Under these circs, you can get by when costumes are right, but when there’s a misunderstanding or the maker hasn’t quite got the hang of what’s needed it’s quite tricky taking clothes to pieces and putting them back together again while you’re looking over your shoulder at what’s happening the other side of the room. For a First Fitting the seams are only lightly stitched so it’s not too difficult to take them apart to show how you want it. I’ve been guilty of a couple of blunders myself: putting a very short chunky person in bright pink stretch-fabric is a hysterical disaster that has to be remade. I also misjudged a weedy apprentice’s costume, which made the enormous actor look fit enough to join the army.

A long and detailed fitting with Clive Francis (Scrooge), discussing what sort of flying harness he should wear. Having just been through all this over Richard Van Allen in Don Quichotte I’m now quite an authority on the subject.

Afterwards downstairs to the rehearsal room - where to my horror I found a completely new bunch of carol singers … requiring costumes they haven’t got for a scene I’d never heard of. The previous day I wandered into rehearsals to find that ladies I thought were to be Dickensian characters have all become statues. So there was nothing for it but design basic plain black dresses for them to wear with shawls as miners’ wives and statues, which they can wear under the little coats and cloaks we’ve managed to hire. Though it sounds all a bit drastic I think it’ll be cheaper and less hassle in the end. I chose some fabric so they’re ready to go when somebody can be found to make them. Poor Carrie asks rhetorically how on earth she can keep track of the budget when people keep throwing in two dozen costumes every day for a week? We can only do our best to be economical but goodness knows what the final tally will be.

11 Nov
27 fittings in six and a half hours. Sometimes when actors were late in arriving from rehearsal we actually had three actors getting in and out of clothes at once. In addition to the four Wardrobe people from Stratford there were individual out-workers: one doing Cratchits, another fancy dress costumes plus the cook, baker and candle-stick maker, a third the new simplified Chorus dresses. Then someonelse dropped in to talk about chains and ribcages. Oh and there was Elaine from hats demanding detailed instructions about who was wearing what hat or bonnet and when.

I hope that all the right decisions were made. Some things were whipping through at such a rate I really couldn’t keep track of them. I still don’t feel we’ve cracked the Chorus problem, because my elegant and simple solutions were scuppered yesterday when certain actresses said they couldn’t possibly make the changes because there wasn’t even time to get off stage, let alone to do it. Perhaps this evening’s production meeting will contain some revelation.

16 Nov
Ghosts all morning and Children all afternoon. Ghosts are going to be very good with several layers of shredded cotton making them look as if they’re disintegrating. The Children are more of a problem because we have to provide for alternate teams: each costume is supposed to fit the same character in both teams - but since they’ve cast children of differing sizes they don’t.

It’s heavy going again with one or two of the cutters who still really haven’t understood what a 19thC period bodice should look like. I could feel the tension and ill feeling mounting as I ripped things apart yet again – but it can’t be helped if we’re to get anything worthwhile on stage. This is no time for a crash course on period styles.

17 Nov
Even in the midst of something as hectic as this a designer has to be thinking forwards if s/he’s to stay afloat. My next job is The Marriage of Figaro for Scottish Opera. Tonight I’m due to have supper at Gabriel’s Wharf with David Leveaux, the director. He wants to do it as a semi-contemporary piece, and I therefore spend the day bashing down some ideas. He likes most of them but decides that the Countess should be less complicated. Over dinner I suddenly realise I’ve got the transvestite role of Cherubino quite wrong, drawing him/her as early Brando - far too self-consciously sexy. We decide on a hint of the abused boarding schoolboy, so that it’s women that are the discovery not sex.

During the day my agent phones to say there’s an availability check about doing Shaw’s The Millionairess with Raquel Welch … of all people. I speak to the director who was very po-faced about the whole business and goes out of his way to assure me it’s only an availability check because La Welch has to be consulted. Remembering how she looked in The Four Musketeers and pictures of her daughter’s wedding I suspect it could be quite a challenge. I suggest to David that the contract must cover redesigns; because I’m quite sure that in between opening at Guildford and coming in to the Haymarket she’s bound to want new clothes,

22 Nov
Very depressed by the wig fittings all afternoon. Tho one or two were excellent, but the wigmaker has an infuriating habit of not accepting correction in any form. If she doesn’t make it right first time, then a huge smoke screen goes up about why she did it like that, with the implication that I was wrong, or that she hadn’t been given enough information, or the actor had the wrong shaped head or whatever. It’s exhausting to have to fight every step of the way. Nobody makes a judgment if people get it wrong the first time, but you jolly well do if they haven’t got the professional flexibility to make corrections without fussing and sulking.

Needless to say, we’re very behind with the costumes, and the Chorus will just have to busk the Tech[nical rehearsal]s next week (dodging John Gunter’s flying houses). I’ve warned Ian, but luckily for us every department is late. I had a long talk with the chap who’s supposed to be doing the chains for Marley & Scrooge’s costumes so I hope the costume props are under control. They’ve gone quiet for a while and I’ve been worried that nothing is happening, but hopefully this’ll gee people up a bit.

23 Nov
Last Run Through in the rehearsal room this morning. It is very good, very truthful, and totally alarming … as they all mimed changes which can’t possibly be done.

We do a few rushed final fittings in the afternoon. Various members of the Chorus didn’t seem to have anything to wear. It became clear that the Farmers’ Wives’ hired dresses were completely hopeless so rather than upset ourselves by trying to make them work, I thought it would be quicker and better in the long run to go and make new ones.

Then to a meeting with Scottish Opera’s Head of Wardrobe, Carol Galloway. She isn’t best pleased when I say it’s impossible for me to go to Glasgow on Wednesday and stay for six weeks. I point out that much of the problem lies in their planning rather than my availability. However she has some very good fabrics, mostly from Priester’s, and I’m pleased with the choices we make. Tomorrow I’m to meet her in Liberty’s to choose more.

After this I manage to finish the Figaro drawings for an evening meeting with David Leveaux. He likes them very much - fortunately - a set-back at this stage of exhaustion would just about tip me over the edge.

24 Nov
As the Christmas Carol costumes are being loaded into skips to go to the Barbican I suggest that since I’m going to Liberty’s anyway they give me an order form to go and chose some attractive cotton for the Farmers’ Wives’ at John Lewis. However this also gives me the un-attractive job of carting it home … and I remember why Wardrobe Supervisors’ arms are always two inches longer than nature intended. Tomorrow we start the Tech and I can’t wait to see how the set’s getting on.

1 Dec
The Tech scheduled for 10:00 finally gets under way at 19:30. The fact that the stage trucks keep crashing into each other and it isn’t completely lit yet makes it all a bit depressing. The girls’ crinolines have been stitched into their character garments which means that none of them had enough petticoats left to go on under their basic costume, so that the shapes were extremely boring.

2 Dec
Grand crisis about the chains for Scrooge and Marley’s Ghost which, as I suspected, had been completely forgotten by the Props Supervisor. Eventually 18 carrier bags of solid metal chain arrive by taxi from some glory-hole in the Stratford armoury. They practically require a forklift truck to get them upstairs. I didn’t bother to hide my annoyance that if the girl had troubled to read the script she would have seen that Marley’s Ghost is supposed to fly with them! She then impertinently suggest I might like to assemble them myself! So we sent her out for several yards of plastic garden chain; but it’s quite clear that her loyalties lie entirely with the set and she considers anything to do with the costumes an irrelevant nuisance.

I suppose it’ll be wonderful. But there is a long way to go before it recovers the immediacy and power of the last Run Through in the rehearsal room.

3 Dec
A productive morning with Carol Galloway in Liberty’s. We appeared to find 90% of the fabrics for Figaro in about half an hour. Whether this is because Carol is exceptionally gifted or pure luck I don’t know, but that means they can get on without having to worry about me being ‘chained’ to Christmas Carol.

The second full Tech day starts well because the dream sequence didn’t involve much machinery. Everyone is so enchanted to see the Fezzywigs in all their pinks that we’re lulled into a false sense of security. After lunch the machinery controlling the trucks starts playing up, and in the evening the whole thing grinds to a halt when the main cable on Scrooge’s big truck gets tangled up with the Ghost Of Christmas Yet To Come. (How prophetic)

So the actors aren’t called tomorrow which means we humble myrmidons also get the day off while the mechanics are sorted out. Without wishing to express too much hindsight, I really think they could’ve seen this coming, I’m told we’re using second-hand motors from a show called Columbus that have never worked properly. So there certainly won’t be a preview on Monday. Tuesday’s is in doubt, and my visit to Glasgow looks distinctly unsettled.

Scots Op are not going to be pleased when I say I may not be able to get up for another week, but at least we found nearly all the fabrics on Friday. I’m very tired but the good news is we have an extra couple of days to find Fishermen’s oilskins and Farmers’ costumes. Apart from that it’s all a bit gloomy.

6 Dec
The first preview is wonderfully exciting, full of the nervous energy I remember from Nicholas Nickleby. At the second we were adding in costumes all the time as it went on, but the performances were rather flat.

7 Dec
I step off the early shuttle at Glasgow slap into a row with the Technical Director because I was supposed to have been here before, but too bad. Figaro’s well in hand. I came back down at the end of the day and crept into the end of a Preview, but I really needn’t have bothered as Ian was off with flu.

Adrian Noble had been in the previous night and taken Ian to task about the music. He felt that the acting was being smothered by the production wizardry, which is to some extent true, but it upset Ian very much. Telling us about it afterwards he said he reminded Adrian that a member of the RSC management had made this comment about every single production he’d done there, and each had been a hit, despite the opinion of Nicholas De Jongh!

15 Dec
Home to Wiltshire for a much needed few days over the weekend and then to Glasgow for Figaro chorus fittings. Stayed for a couple of nights in the Hospitality Inn, then back to Heathrow, airbus to Reading where I and Maxwell took part in the Christmas ‘Wassail’ at my younger daughter’s school, Leighton Park before bringing her home.

19 Dec
Up before dawn, Maxwell drove me to Bristol for 07:15 flight, which I always rather like. Atmosphere in Glasgow marred by another row with the Technical Director who thinks I should be spending all my time here. I thought I’d straightened things out, but they say he’s like this with everybody, indeed I dream of him as a policeman that night.

21 Dec
Manage to get my exes out of them despite the rows, and so home for Xmas. Plane appallingly late at Bristol, having stood on the tarmac at Glasgow for nearly 40 minutes. Such is the glamorous life of the executive commuter.

25 Dec
Our first Xmas in the country. It gives me untold pleasure just to sit quietly surrounded by candles. Christmas Carol is well on now and playing to packed houses and public acclaim. So I suppose that the RSC will never consider that perhaps too much was asked of us all. There’s quite a bit more work that should have been done to really finish the costumes – but since it’s opened I guess nobody will bother. Not a production I’d care to go through again. It made Glasgow seem like a holiday camp, despite the rows.