After more than 50 years dressing performers on stage and screen, Tauranga’s Alf Weston has come out of retirement to design the costumes in Tauranga Repertory Society’s newest production Nell Gwynn. “It’s a lot of fun. I quite enjoy community theatre,” said the 75-year-old.

“In a large professional production, I would be given a big budget to send people off to tailors and import fabric. On a smaller scale, you have to be so much more inventive and savvy.”

In fact, Weston laughingly admitted to scouring local ops shops for the right fabrics.

“At least four of the actors have been swanning about on stage wearing old curtains,” he said. “The big problem I had when I went shopping for fabrics is that furniture shops had none of the brocades and colour combinations I needed. Everywhere I looked was a plague of greys and beige; I call it grey-ge.”

Alf Weston, 75, hard at work behind the scenes of Tauranga Repertory Society’s ‘Nell Gwynn’ production. Photo: Pete Luxford Photography.

It was colours he needed for the “rowdy comedy” set in 16th century London, that’s based on the true story of King Charles II’s favourite mistress, Nell Gwynn. The production began on November 22 and the final show is this Saturday, December 7, at 16th Ave Theatre.

Old tool (colours)

“Colours are an old tool used to subtly manipulate the audience reaction to certain characters,” Weston said. “A young innocent would be dressed in white with pale blue. In this production, I used green for one of the King’s lovers to symbolise jealousy and envy.”

Weston began sewing as a schoolboy in rural Waikato, making clothes for his mother before joining the Hamilton Operatic Society in 1967. In 1974, he got a job as wardrobe master at TVNZ and got to flex his creativity on a historical series set during the Otago gold rush. Later he worked for fashion designers Liz Mitchell in Auckland and Collette Dinnigan in Sydney. Among his career highlights is working on a television series in the 1980s with legendary comedian, the late Billy T James.

“It was a variety show called Radio Times set in a 1930s recording studio where everyone, even the audience, was dressed up to the nines. Every time he came in, Billy would have a joke and he always delivered the punchlines to perfection.”

Educating the cast

A few years in Sydney saw him working for Opera Australia on productions like La Boheme and Cavalleria Rusticana and he fondly remembers his time with the Royal New Zealand Ballet when he needed to dress one dancer as a bear. “Then, of course, ballerinas need to spin on one foot and turn upside down, which is a challenge for us in the costume department.”

Alf Weston, 75, hard at work behind the scenes of Tauranga Repertory Society’s ‘Nell Gwynn’ production. Photo: Pete Luxford Photography.

Weston said there aren’t many on stage wardrobe malfunctions as “they tend to be ironed out in rehearsals” but there was some educating that had to happen for the male cast members of Nell Gwynn who were wearing flamboyant costumes of England’s Restoration era.

“A lot of the guys are so young that they’ve probably never even seen a woman putting on stockings, so our lead actor Brendan lined them up and gave them a tutorial on how to put on tights underneath their breeches so they didn’t wrinkle around their ankles or get ripped. It was pretty funny.”

- SunLive