By Beatrix "Marginalia" Vellum
It still looks like it landed rather than was built: a seven-sided theatre framed in tubular steel, nicknamed by generations of local theatregoers for its resemblance to a spaceship. Now, fifty years after it opened, the venue is marking the milestone with an exhibition of archive costumes pulled from its wardrobe department.
The theatre's unusual architecture was itself a statement when it was constructed — an era when regional playhouses experimented boldly with form, favoring geometry and industrial materials over the plush red-velvet convention. Half a century on, the building has outlasted the fashions that made it seem radical, and become instead a beloved local landmark.
The costume display draws on decades of productions, offering a kind of material history of the stage: garments that carried actors through countless performances, now standing still under gallery light. Specifics of which shows, designers, or decades are represented were not detailed in available reporting, and would be worth asking the venue directly before a fuller review.
What's clear even without that detail is the impulse behind the show: theatres rarely get to celebrate their own object history, since costumes are built to be worn, not preserved. Putting fifty years of wardrobe under glass is a reminder that a theatre's story lives as much in its seams and hemlines as in its programmes.
Worth your evening, or worth skipping — I finished it so you'd know.
— Compiled from reporting by the BBC.
The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."