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Predominately
seen as a writer for radio and television, Giles Cooper wrote
several stage plays of which 'Happy Family' was his last. It was
staged at the Hampstead Theatre Club in 1966, shortly before his
mysterious death falling from a train.
The plot concerns
the relations between two sisters and one brother who, due to
their parents' refusal to let them grow up and those parents'
subsequent death, have remained perpetually locked in a warped
existence of elaborate nursery rules and regulations. Their world
is thrown into turmoil when Susan ("Duchess"), in a
desperate bid to escape the petty tyrannies of her brother Mark
("Bark") and the naïve simplicity of her younger
sister Deborah ("Deebola"), introduces her fiancé
to the family. The elasticity of their hide-bound world is stretched
to breaking point by this 'intrusion'.
I had to create
an early 1960s period living room set for Deborah's cottage in
Huntingdonshire. Although still regressed in their childhood ways
the three siblings have moved apart so I reasoned that Deborah's
house would be a hotchpotch of watered down 1950s stiles combined
with the traditional Victorian features of the house and various
inherited pieces of furniture and ornaments.
Susan is the
bossy elder sister who wants to escape this childhood world and
as such I reasoned that she would be dressed fairly smartly and
fashionably. In contrast to her Deborah is unworldly and much
less concerned about her appearance, hence the green and brown
tweed skirt and that delightful baby pink woolly cardigan. The
actor who played Mark and I had fun devising a costume in which
everything he wore, from his day clothes to his pyjamas had a
striped theme, echoing the inflexibility of his character. Gregory
meanwhile wore a less formal suit, obviously slightly worn but
kept for 'best', thus betraying his origins.
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