Liverpool Daily Post Interview 1972

For readability and accessibility, the interview has been reproduced as printed in full below:

WHEN Shelley Brian finished her training back home in the States last spring, she hadn’t even heard of Liverpool Playhouse. Last month she became wardrobe mistress there, and ranks as the year’s most enthusiastic newcomer to the theatre and the city.

She’s still amused by the way she got the post: “I really just happened to be in Liverpool. After I finished my training I got a job looking after opera costumes at a festival in Spolleto, Italy. I was there for May and June. I spent July on holiday and I was going across Europe slowly, taking time to see everything.

“I’d been to London and came to Liverpool to take the boat to Dublin. I saw the advertisement for a wardrobe mistress, applied for the job and got it. I did get to Dublin too eventually, just for two days. I told you” she ends, laughing, “that this was a funny story.”

There’s all the cool enterprise of young America in that story, but no one could be farther removed from the swinging hippy image: her long blonde hair and frankly child-like face give her an Alice in Wonderland air, even younger than her 21 years.

But despite her youth and that bubbling humour, she has packed a lot of professional experience into her few years and talks of her responsibilities soberly, with the calm appraisal of an old hand.

Born in Illinois, she trained at one of the American performing arts colleges. Briefly she had wanted to act, then, deciding she wouldn’t make the grade on stage, turned her interest to the costumes. “I like to draw and I like to sew and I like theatre, so it was a good combination of all three.”

Her responsibility begins where the designer leaves off. She builds the costume, fits it, cares for it, mends it, and may finally see it as an item in the Playhouse’s vast hiring department.

She had a fairly easy time on the first play of the season, Conduct Unbecoming, because the men’s military uniforms were hired, leaving her only four women’s dresses to make. Or five: one was made in duplicate, with the copy being produced as evidence of an attack, ripped, muddied, bloodied.

Seeing one’s work destroyed in this way is a professional hazard Shelley’s met before:

“I had to take it down to the scene shop and get it dragged over with paint. I’ve done several shows like that where you build this gorgeous costume and it’s torn up because someone’s been in the wars.”

Hired costumes have to be altered to fit: “Sometimes it’s almost easier to make them yourself.” And there are plenty of day to day crises ranging from accidental damage through sewing machine breakdowns to the actor who doesn’t like the costume . . .

On the other hand, since she has studied the play and has an idea-shared with the actual designer-of how the characters should be looking, the costume fitting can be a happier moment; “I’ve known an actor say, ‘Oh I can’t get into this part.’ then he puts on the costume and he can do it.”

The next play-Vivat! Vivat! Regina-presents problems because everyone thinks they know just how Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots looked, and the Christmas production of Alice will bring similar difficulties. “I’m really afraid of Alice, because we are using the Tenniel pictures. It will mean building heads and making a mock turtle . . .”

Outside the theatre-she has found a flat in Mount Pleasant-she enjoys Liverpool, and is obviously sincere when she says she loves the place. “I hope I’m staying here. The people are incredibly friendly and sometimes I forget I’m not back home in the States. And this is a good theatre. It’s a long time since I’ve felt like this about a theatre. It’s a happy place.”

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During Shelley’s time at the Liverpool Playhouse she was programme-credited as wardrobe mistress on productions including:

Conduct Un Becoming
National Health
Vivat! Vivat Regina!
Alice Through the Looking Glass
Brainwaves
Ha-Ha Ken Dodd
A Night at the Indian Empire
Come Blow Your Horn
The Woman in White
A Taste of Honey
Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs