Trousers down, trousers up

By the time I show up at Glyndebourne for the start of Season 2019, the remarkable, intricate machinery of the Festival has already been rumbling along for about six weeks, since rehearsals began back in the chilly mornings of March. But it’s only now, in late April, that the costumes are ready to put in an appearance and the dressers have been summoned. Every year, when I step through the stage door on my first day back, it feels as if no time has passed at all, and everything in this backstage world of wonder feels intimately familiar. The whiff of flowers from the stage door desk. The cheery smiles from the security staff, the squeak of wheels on a double bass case, laughter echoing in the lift shaft. 

The Circle Level kitchen stinks of instant coffee, and both the kettles are rattling furiously, belching steam. Shy spring sunlight is shining through the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows in the green room as, bleary-eyed and winter-worn, the dressers greet each other with hugs and high, giggly voices. I receive compliments on my new water flask, so we are off to a good start. Pretty soon, the team of eighteen women has gathered, and we have pulled together a motley collection of squashy armchairs and stools for a day of ‘dresser training’ - a reacquaintance with the various whys and wherefores of the job, and an introduction to the shows that we will be working on.  

When people ask my colleague Blossom what the job of theatrical dresser entails, she replies, ‘trousers down, trousers up!’ And, well, yes, that pretty much covers it. We are essentially there to get the performers in and out of their costumes, particularly with the quick-changes, which can often feel a bit like a Formula One pit-stop when stage management are standing by, counting down the seconds as you fly through fiddly buttons and stiff catches in the light of your head-torch. The more pastoral elements of the position are not normally listed in the job description — but if you are able to stay calm, keep a clear head and form a bond of trust with the artists you’re working with, I’d say you’re off to a good start. 

This morning, I am epically tired after a finishing a commission to a tight deadline, but Boss Lucy has brought in a pile of jam tarts and French Fancies, and I lurch through the morning of admin on a whizzing sugar rush, crumbs sparkling on my fingers. 

We get a rundown on how not to make social media blunders when sharing opera-related content. Contracts and health-and-safety forms are exchanged, security pass-cards are handed out, and lockers are assigned. 

When we break for lunch, I take my shiny new lanyard and head over to the Nether Wallop restaurant (a fancy turn of phrase for a kick in the groin?). I fill a little cardboard box from a selection of salads, and take it to a hidden corner in the gardens, where I lie down for a sunlit nap among the daisies and bluebells, feeling like a flower fairy. 

The afternoon is all about Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust, which is being directed by Richard Jones. Crammed into ‘the mothership’ — the top-floor rooms that comprise the headquarters of the Running Wardrobe department (so-called because we look after the costumes during the running of the show), we crowd around a computer monitor and watch a video recording of Jones giving a model-box presentation of his vision for the production. He reaches into a perfectly scaled down model of the set design and moves tiny pieces of scenery around, while his costume designer Nicky Gillibrand flaps costume drawings at the small assembled audience. I am blown away by the story — a soul is sold to the devil in a bid for the romantic dream! Maligned spirits! Drugs made from magical flowers!

We venture down to the costume store in the basement of the building to take a look at the costumes, dangling from black-painted float rails among a forest of moth traps. Beneath the harsh glare of fluorescent strip lights, the astonishing, painstaking work that’s gone into the costumes is plain to see. Not much is ready yet though, apart from some eye-popping codpieces for the dancers, which come complete with rampant pubic hair spilling out around the edges. 

Next, we file upstairs and pass through a magical red door with a sign on it that reads, Silence. Stage. On the other side, is another world. I always feel a rush of goosebumps when I step onto the stage. This is where the real magic actually happens, and as we stand about in the wings, I can feel the atmosphere literally humming with it. A rehearsal is happening in the main stage area, so we creep around as quietly as we can, our shoes soft on the black hardwood, murmuring to each other in low voices. The ‘workers’ are up — strip lights that flood everything with bright luminosity, so we can clearly see what we are looking at. I crane my head back and stare up into the labyrinthe of rigging and flies high above our heads, and marvel at all the trussing, cables, ropes, and machinery that I don’t understand. Boss Lucy points out where our quick change booths will be set up in the wings, and this is where many of us will spend most of the duration of the show, camped out in our ‘backstage blacks’ so that we won’t show up amid the shadows and glitter-laced dust. 

Finally, we slip through a secret door in the back of the kitchen to sneak into the auditorium, quietly tripping over empty seats and hidden steps in the dark as we peek at the rehearsal in progress. Faust himself, played by tenor Allan Clayton, is on the stage, dressed in a black T shirt, baggy jeans and trainers. He is already managing to imbue his wild eyes and even wilder hair with pathos and poignancy, while a répétiteur’s billiard-ball head bobs at a glossy, black grand piano in the pit. Meanwhile, the dressers are hissing in the shadows about when the next staff bus will leave, and a little while later, we slink out to catch it. 

Puppets and head explosions

It’s the first day of dress rehearsals for The Magic Flute, and the dressers’ team are gathered in the Running Wardrobe head-quarters bright and early. For some of us, it feels like it’s only been a few hours since we were putting away last night’s show, but that’s how it goes at this time of the season, when the pace is gunning at full-steam. 

I am handed a slim stack of stapled notes and a basket of towels, and I head downstairs to meet my charges — four puppeteers. They turn out to be bright, beaming, lovely young men. Often, I find that singers can rely on dressers to shepherd them through the costume plot, but these guys are sharp as pins, and they pore over my plot with me to get clear in their heads about where and when they are meant to be wearing what. I’ve heard rumours that they have worked with Cirque du Soleil and on Warhorse, but there’s not much time for chitchat today — I’ll ask them another time. 

The atmosphere is shimmering with a low level buzz of anticipation. Performers begin to emerge, transformed, from their dressing rooms and everyone is looking as though they have just stepped right out of a fabulous Edwardian children’s book illustration. The costumes are amazing — stunning elements of fantasy have been woven through the historical references with smile-sparking wit and imagination. Tailors and seamstresses are clustered in the corridors, tape measures draped around their necks, frowning with concentration as they scrutinise their handiwork. 

‘Holy moly,’ says wig-technician Dee as she examines the men’s chorus chef hats — giant creations with internal wiring and a battery pack so that they can be illuminated via remote control. ‘I think this one’s going to be a corker!’ 

There are some errors on my plot, instructing me to set incorrect items of costume in the Opposite-Prompt quick-change cage, and also some hats are missing. But wardrobe-assistant Leah barks questions into her headset, and we get everything all straightened out in plenty of time. My agenda is to keep everything as calm and zen as possible, and so far this plan seems to be working.

After Act 1 has been rehearsed, all dressers are called to the Running Wardrobe headquarters for notes with the costume supervisor, Caroline, who is part of the designer’s team. This has never happened before — the exacting standards that this show’s director-designer team, Barbe & Doucet, has set are unprecedented. With her salmon pink cardigan, necklace of rose quartz beads and softly spoken voice, Caroline has the demeanour of a gentle primary school teacher and yet the severity of her silver bob and the unbending line of her eyebrows suggests that not even the tiniest detail could hope to slip past her attention. She runs through each member of the cast, addressing the appropriate dresser in turn, and drills through the list of notes she has written into a hard-backed notebook with an expensive looking fountain pen. The men’s chorus dressers get a detailed demonstration on how to fit the neck-ties correctly - the knots must all be tied in a certain, particular way. Fortunately, I already have the answers for her queries about the missing puppeteer hats and ill-fitting belts.

At lunch time, I’m happy to disappear into the furthest reaches of the gardens and sit amid a cacophony of cricket song. I lie back on the warm, glossy grass and allow the sunshine to melt across my eyelids, gently sponging away any stress from the morning.

In the afternoon, I find both kettles in the circle level kitchen are already rattling with steam as everybody gears up for Act 2. The men’s chorus materialise from their dressing room and congregate in the corridor while waiting for their hats to be fitted on. I notice that Mike is wearing knee pads underneath his gigantic, teepee-shaped pastry chef’s costume. Then I remember that he’s drawn the short straw yet again — he will be playing a dwarf, and will be performing on his knees. He gives me a sardonic eye roll and gestures at the costume. ‘Inspiration for one of your paintings perhaps, Pearl?’ 

I head up to the stage in preparation for a quick change, and discover a fifteen-foot high suitcase is being wheeled onto the stage. The crew are clearly struggling with the weight of it, and they almost squish stage manager Claire into her desk in the Prompt Corner, but nothing seems to distract her from calmly continuing with her announcements into her little microphone — ‘Electrics, this is your call for the pyro head explosion, thank you.’ 

Two of my puppeteers are getting strapped into harnesses which are attached to gigantic robot puppets that look about as tall as houses — their massive heads are wobbling around somewhere near the rigging. I pull the puppeteers’ jackets on over the harnesses, before crouching down to help them into boots that are attached to the puppet’s feet. Each puppet is flanked by three other operators — one for each of the arms and one for the head, using long poles, and I step back as the huge figures begin to carefully manoeuvre towards the stage, dwarfing everyone around them.

In about ten minutes’ time, when they come back off stage, I will have thirty seconds to get one of the puppeteers out of his jacket, harness, and puppet boots, and then into a black cloak, black gloves and black shoes. I roll each glove down, ready to shove onto his hands, and tuck them into my pockets, with the cloak draped around my shoulders. I stand ready and waiting while my colleagues hover nearby, poised to catch the other puppeteers. It’s going to be an intense change and big scene changes will be going on around us at the same time, so we’ll have to keep our wits about us to keep from getting mown down. 

Sure enough, a few moments later, the puppets lumber off the stage and stride back into the wings just as huge pieces of scenery start to rumble by. ‘Mind your backs! Stand back! Stand back!’ 

I find myself clambering in between Jack’s puppet’s legs to help Jack out of his jacket and unclip his harness. As the puppet is wheeled away, I rip the gloves from my pockets, jam them onto his hands, and then pull the cloak off my back so that he can dive straight into the sleeves. I’m thankful that Rachael has dropped down to the floor to help him with his shoes while I scoot around behind to close the cloak down Jack’s back with magnetic fastenings. 

‘These are gonna need elastics!’ Rachael yells over her shoulder as she struggles with the shoelaces, and Leah duly scribbles notes. Done — we are done! And the puppeteers, now invisible in their cloaks, glide back to the stage. 

The day eases to a close and as we are rehanging and sorting costumes, Dee calls to me, ‘You look so calm, Pearl!’ 

‘Ah,’ I reply, ‘it’s all just an act!’

Sweating it out

‘No notes today,’ says Boss Lucy, struggling to raise her voice above the fan that whirrs furiously on her desk. ‘I haven’t had any messages to say that anyone’s off. But it’s very hot, so take it easy. Don’t push yourselves, drink plenty of water and let me know if you’re not feeling well. Have a great show!’ 

The stage crew are still setting the stage, and red DO NOT ENTER tapes are pulled across the entry door, meaning we cannot pre-set our quick-changes backstage. Apparently Rinaldo had been rehearsing on stage this morning, and the crew are struggling to switch everything over to the mammoth Magic Flute on time. When they first tried this change-over, it took them seven hours. So far today, they’ve been at it for four, which is a bit ominous. If the show runs late, rumour has it that Glyndebourne will pay Southern Rail something in the region of £100,000 a minute to hold the London train at Lewes station until the patrons are on board. So, the pressure is on — but in the end, the curtain is only fifteen minutes late going up. I have to rush around and set my changes once the show has already started, and even then, the crew are still flinging things into place with slightly mad looking eyes.

I squirrel myself away in the Opposite-Promt quick-change booth, waiting for the puppeteers’ first change. My face is aglow in the light from my Kindle as I suck up Stephen King’s The Green Mile, while The Magic Flute thunders along on the other side of the black felt curtain. 

After the interval, I hover in the wings so that I can listen to the Queen of the Night’s famous aria. Standing in a glittering purple dress, Caroline Wettergreen is belting out some shockingly high notes, and I imagine champagne glasses exploding all over the lawns. I’ve heard from her dresser how nervous she has been, but there’s no sign of any cracks on stage tonight. As she sweeps off the stage for a grand exit, three pyrotechnic detonations blaze flashes of light into the wings. I had forgotten that they happen, and I am laughing with shock, my hands plastered over my face. 

The next day, the temperature outside climbs perilously high, and the hillsides are turning brown in the baking heat. On Cendrillon, the air backstage feels heavy, like it’s literally permeated with sweat. While I’m doing the ladies’ chorus quick change, their bodies are slimy and wet. The costumes are sopping, and I feel I could almost wring them out. When I pull my head torch up onto my forehead, it slips back down my shiny face, bumping my nose on the way. There’s no time to reposition it but luckily Claire steps in and shines the beam of her own torch onto the fastenings of my costumes for me.

When I go upstairs to the green room for the dinner break, the heat makes it feel as though we’re in another country, like Jakarta. Bodies are draped over the sofas and armchairs, and no one’s got the energy for conversation. I find a chair near Alison, and we sit by an open window that has no breeze coming through it. I’m mindlessly scrolling through Instagram on my phone when I become aware of a presence crouching beside me — it’s Boss Lucy. She tells me that Gemma has had to go home, and wants to know if I can cover her plot, which is with the male dancers. So I hurry back down to my post outside the ladies’ chorus with the show’s master plot, and start to wade through the pages to see what the male dancers will be getting up to. But soon Claire appears and says the plan has been changed — Angela will be looking after the dancers and I am to take care of the Step Mother’s quick-change. My heart is doing a quick-change as I gallop up to the Principals on the Circle Level and find Agnes, who plays Cinderella’s step-mother. I knock on her door and sidle into the room. 

‘Hellooo,’ says Agnes in an accent I can’t place. She’s standing with her legs astride in an A-formation with her hands planted on her hips, like some kind of extraordinary superhero. She’s wearing an enormous pair of pants with suspenders, and a bra that looks like it might have been pinched from Madonna. 

‘Hi,’ I say, ‘I’m going to be doing your quick-change today.’

‘Ah, okaay,’ says Agnes. ‘Is fine, we have the time.’ And she waves her hands, batting away any concerns. ‘I show you.’ Her bright blue eyeshadow sparkles as she gives me a poker-faced wink, and I give her a nod and a double thumbs-up. 

After the second half has launched, I check my watch multiple times for fear of missing the change, but I show up at the quick-change booth in plenty of time. Soon enough, Agnes comes striding in. She’s already in her underwear as she kicks off a pair of glittery gold shoes and then points to a corset. ‘This first.’ And then I’m grappling with unfamiliar fastenings that twist in ways I don’t expect. It’ll be fine, it always is, I tell myself, and it is. Next the skirt. Then she sits in a chair in front of the mirror for her wig and makeup changes, while I fasten on a gaudy necklace, and hand her her rings and bracelets. She slips her own feet into a new pair of shoes. And we’re done. I give her another thumbs-up in the mirror, and she gives me a grin of thanks. 

Back downstairs at the end of the show, I strip the chorus girls out of their costumes. They apologise for being so sweaty but I implore them not to worry, it’s all part of the job. Years of ripping out pit-pads and handling sweat-soaked costumes have rendered me completely un-squeamish but even so, at the end of the night, I am standing over the kitchen sink on the Circle Level, soaping my arms up to my elbows. Ahhh! Living the dream. 

The show must go on

Flute Performance Number 9 is unfolding nicely, albeit with an understudy replacing an indisposed Queen of The Night. I’m sitting in my usual spot by the refrigerator in the understage corridor, outside the men’s chorus and the Puppeteers’ dressing rooms. An assortment of wigs technicians and makeup artists sprawl in adjacent chairs alongside me, scrolling on their phones while they wait for cues and changes. I’m watching a monitor fixed to the wall, that shows what’s happening on the stage. Occasionally, someone will try to sneak the channel over to football or Love Island, but we need to see where the show is at. Dresser Adeline fishes a whistle pop out from her bag, and reduces us all to tears of laughter as she tries to work out Beethoven’s 5th on it. We’re suggesting that she ask the conductor if he’ll let her join the orchestra when it begins to melt in her mouth, so she crunches it up and retires to the table in the costume store to do some drawing in her sketchbook.  

I check my timer. It’s 40 minutes into the show, and coming up for one of the puppeteers’ side-of-stage quick-changes. I stand up, and am just checking that I have my head-torch with me, when the lights overhead flicker, pop, and then cut out. Suddenly, everything is plunged into the semi-darkness of emergency lighting. The intercom is dead, and the opera has ground to halt. The monitor screen is black. I hear a thunderous rumbling coming from the stage as the safety iron hurtles down, and then the fire alarms begin to wail. I turn to catch eyes with my colleagues, and no one is smiling. This is not a drill.

Right, I think. Just follow the motions. I go back to my chair and as I reach for my bag that’s tucked beneath it, I am trying to remember where the emergency meeting point for dressers is in the gardens — it gets changed every year. Chorus singers and a couple of the puppeteers spill out from their dressing rooms — ‘what do we do? Do we leave the building? What’s happening?’ 

By now, the fire alarm is stopping and starting, meaning we are all caught up in a frozen limbo of confusion. ‘Wait,’ says wardrobe assistant Leah, ‘let’s just hold on for a sec.’

We can hear footsteps running down the corridor, and Tristan from stage management screeches around the corner. ‘Stay here,’ he instructs, ‘just stay in your dressing rooms.’ In lieu of a working intercom, he is literally having to physically sprint around the building in person. ‘Don’t go anywhere,’ he says, ‘I need to know where you all are and where I can find you.’ 

‘What’s happening?’ Leah asks him. 

‘I don’t know,’ he says with a panicked shrug, and then he shoots off again. 

I sit back down, and notice that my knees are shaking. 

‘Oi,’ Leah calls after a couple of chorus men who are beginning to make their way down the corridor. ‘Where are you going?’ 

‘To make a cup of tea.’ They hold up their mugs. 

‘And how are you going to manage that without a working kettle?’

They look at each other. ‘Oh yeah…’

It occurs to us that the power-cut might be wider spread than just Glyndebourne, and I reach for my phone to see if Twitter might be able to offer any answers, but just as I discover that there’s no internet, I hear an anguished cry from inside the men’s chorus dressing room — ‘No internet? What are we going to doooo?!’ 

Adeline quietly continues with her drawing in the costume store, working by the light of her head-torch. 

Boss Lucy appears. She’s making her way around the building to check on all the dressers, and she hands Leah a battery powered walkie-talkie so that all of the Running Wardrobe assistants can keep in contact with each other. 

Nobody’s quite sure why the Glyndebourne generator hasn’t kicked in, but a few performers who have trickled back from the stage have some snippets of information for us. All the bigwigs of the company have gathered at the side of the stage in the Prompt-side wing, which is apparently is the protocol for situations such as this. And the upshot? Nobody knows what has happened, and nobody knows what to do. This news sets everyone off into gales of adrenaline-spiked laughter. Then we hear that the auditorium is in pitch blackness and the worker lights are not working, which means the audience have had to stay put. We wonder what they are all thinking, sitting there in the darkness. As the minutes tick by, the next piece of news filters through — the management are trying to decide if the show should be abandoned and the audience reimbursed, or if they should wait and hope for a return of power and pay everyone overtime, and in which case, how long they should wait for.

The lights come back on. Then they go out again. And then they come back on again once more.

Leah’s walkie-talkie crackles — ‘Lights are on in the pit.’ We hear that the building management department are turning the power back on in different parts of building one section at a time, to ward off the risk of a power overload. Next to come back are the auditorium lights, and the audience are finally released into the gardens. 

Stage management Claire’s voice comes over the intercom — ‘This is a test call.’ She then informs the company that we will restart the show, picking up from where we left off, but that it will take about half an hour to get everything back on track. 

‘Alright then!’ says Leah, throwing up her hands with an overwhelmed laugh. ‘I guess that means go take a tea break!’ 

I make my way to the Courtyard canteen, and find it packed with orchestra. They’ve probably been in here the whole time. By now the internet is back on, and we learn that the power-cut was not just us, but has affected a large part of the country. 

Calls are going out for principal singer Bjorn, who has gone awol, but once he has been rounded up and returned to his dressing room, we are ready to restart the show. I pass the Front of House manager Jules as I make way back to the under-stage corridor. She’s speaking into a walkie-talkie — ‘…if you could start to encourage them back in…’ 

I head back to my spot by the men’s chorus, and see that the monitor has come back to life. Jules is making her way across the stage in front of the safety iron, illuminated in a pool of light. She stops to make an announcement, and Leah stabs at the volume button on the remote control so that we can hear what she is saying. She’s thanking the audience for their patience, and informing them that we will be finishing an hour later than scheduled, but that the Glyndebourne transport will get them back to Lewes in time to catch later trains to London, and that Box Office staff can help with ordering taxis. 

Then the safety iron rattles up again, revealing that the stage behind it is all lit and ready to go. The conductor returns to the pit, and Sofia Fomina reappears on the stage as Pamina. She curtseys cutely for the audience, who roar with applause and cheers, before she reenacts the faint she had performed just before the power had cut out. The music swells up again, and we are off once more, almost an hour behind schedule. 

The show will indeed, go on.