Pomona

After experimenting with styles and colours, here is where the designs landed. Each character's palette is taken from one side of a Rubik's Cube, which plays another key role in the show, and with their muted tones they appeared natural whilst still holding that sense of heightened reality we were aiming for.

The character of 'Ollie' is actually quite an interesting one, as it the role switches between playing 'Ollie' and 'Ollie's Twin', but it's never explicitly stated in the play when this switch happens. As a hint as to which Ollie the audience is seeing, I had it so one twin has her hair down and hoodie unzipped, and the other hair up and zipped up. At the end of the play, the story starts again from the beginning, like a big loop, but the twins switch places. In order to show this transition of one twin slowly becoming the other one, the one with her hair up starts the play with a high ponytail, but as her story progresses, the ponytail gets lower and looser until her hair is down, showing she has become the other twin.

Fay is a single mother who has become a sex worker in order to make ends meet, but despite her profession it didn't really feel necessary to fall into stereotypical "hooker fashion". Her main drive is the fact that she is a caring and loving person, so I wanted her clothes to reflect that, with comfy fitting clothes and a lovely thrifted knit shirt sourced from a Cardiff charity shop. Though the play is cyclical, it's also a non-linear narrative, the timeline of events goes backwards and forwards every scene, so a means of keeping track where characters are in their own timeline (this play is very confusing), I had it so each character has several layers that they can put on/remove in order to show the progression of time. In Fay's case she starts off her timeline with her bandana and denim jacket, then eventually she loses the jacket, eventually leading her to her hectic frazzled hair at the end of her story.

In this version of the play, the character of 'Keaton' plays three roles: the innocent girl who plays games in a café, 'The Girl' who is a mysterious leader of a black market organ farm, and 'The Figure' who wears a Cthulhu mask and plays with a Rubik's Cube. The innocent girl is who landed with the 'designer' clothes from earlier drawings, most notably their shoes and these zipped flare jeans, also a thrift find. 'The Figure' dons their mask and a big green trenchcoat as to completely obscure their humanity, cold and emotionless. 'The Girl' is somewhere inbetween the two, the green overcoat is opened but still partially obscures, peeks of humanity showing behind the apathetic exterior, which eventually gets shown at the final scene of the play.

Zeppo appears twice in the play, right at the beginning eating chicken nuggets and talking about Indiana Jones, and at the end of the play where he's inexplicably a seagull. No explanation. He's just a seagull. He's a man with a great deal of wealth by owning properties, but all he spends it on is McDonalds and petrol for the car where he conducts his "business." His style is very 'retro', but not because it was bought that way, he just bought expensive clothes years ago and they accumulated grime and weathering as time goes by, at least is the narrative we came up with for the character.

Moe struggles with his anger management, bit by bit losing a hold of his violent sideas the play runs through, eventually landing at the death of his only friend whilst working the gates of Pomona. How a person wears their uniform says a lot about their personality, in Moe's case he can be reserved and contained when being confronted by his boss or keep himself reserved when asking Fay for a favour. But when chaos starts to set in, his wild emotions and unsettled rage burst out as he slowly loses control.

Charlie is a bit of a lovable idiot. He tries his best but ultimately isn't able to make his own decisions, he follows Moe in almost every regard, he smartens his uniform up when Moe tells him to, stops playing his gameboy when told. But the one time he doesn't follow Moe's orders is his refusal to help kill Fay, which ultimately leads to his death. Charlie doesn't really 'wear' his uniform, he uses it more as a prop in this version: he uses it to shelter himself when Moe is angry at him, pretends it's a cultist robe when playing D&D with Keaton. The only time he hasn't got his 'prop' is is final fight with Moe, just a plain white shirt stained with his own blood.

All Gale cares about is the money. Sleek business attire, big fur coats, and golden jewellery all hide a coward just trying to save her own skin and make another dime, even in her final moments she orders her accountant to burn all her money so no one else gets it. In Gale's mind she wears red in order to be a symbol of danger, of a threat, but in actuality it's her who's in danger when she crosses The Girl, her direct opposite on the colour palette.