I will be the first to admit, I loved the first Sex and the City movie. Superior costumes, great plot, good acting, passable direction and writing. I’ll also be the first to admit that I’ve been waiting two years for the sequel, and now I’m just disappointed.

For those of you living on another planet (caves probably have satellite reception these days), Sex and the City follows the lives of four New York City socialites and their intricate, often shallow, exploits. We meet  the characters again two years after the first film; the audience is thrust into a same-sex marriage in Connecticut. The nuptials reminded me of a Tim Burton adaptation of the Lawrence Welk Show, but then I remembered that this was real life…kind of. There are swans, a male choir, and just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, Liza Minnelli weds the couples and follows with a performance of “Single Ladies,” which was almost surely a harbinger of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Appropriately, two Sodomites were being wed.

Back in NYC, the girls gripe and moan about their middle aged lives. Carrie tries to motivate Big to return to his old self (the one that went out on the town), Samantha is combatting menopause with a cocktail regimen of hormones so she can maintain her slutty lifestyle, Miranda complains about her new boss not liking her, and Charlotte, stressed about her children, becomes jealous over her nanny (the gorgeous Alice Eve). At 22, I questioned why the audience would sympathize with four (upper) middle-aged women who deal with very common problems in a very uncommon, superfluous, and STUPID way.

Somehow, the film travels to Abu Dahbi where Samantha is doing business with a hotel exec. Instead of getting business done, the girls have an unexplainable (6 days) of free time to don their Gucci, Valentino, and Dior around the conservative fashion of Islamic women and the emirate.  The interactions between the four girls and Islamic culture was disturbing in general.

The film often walks a fine line between smut and cinema. While there is never full frontal, tons of cleavage and bulges appear at the most unnecessary times. Soccer players, in town for the World Cup try outs, often take their shirts off at the shutter of a lens and wear mankinis. Samantha, hunting for man-prey the minute the plane touches down, eventually sets her sights on a european architect, Rikard (Dick) Spirt….

After an incredibly stressful scene at dinner where Dick Spirt and Samantha are fondling each other in front of a mortified Islamic couple, Samantha finds herself in jail for violating a serious crime. The hotel manager severs ties (before the business meeting) and it is time to get the hell out of Dodge (or at least a $20,000 a night hotel room). Upon trying to escape, Samantha further upsets a mob and the girls seek shelter in a women’s book club where it is revealed under burkas, muslim women where Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, etc.  Of course, because how else are women supposed to function?  I remember when the show used to be about the “everyday-ness” of womanhood, and how relatable these girls were supposed to be.  Now it’s just lost in ostentatiousness and offensive showcasing.

In the end, the dodecahedron of plot is never resolved. The characters undoubtably return to their Upper West Side apartments to refuel on cosmopolitans and watch The Real Housewives of New York (or maybe the Jersey Shore). Nobody learns anything and the movie felt as if the writers had 20 good jokes that they padded with two and a half hours of cinema. I feel like I’m so far removed from the Sex and the City franchise which drew me in originally.

At work in the costume shop, my boss tells me, “I need you to sew these pants.”

The true costumer knows it really means, “I need you to pin these pieces, sew at half an inch, measure the waistband three inches short of original size, make a casing for the elastic, make sure it aligns with other side, do the same for the legs, sew three button holes on each side, fit them with the buttons, and hand sew those on, too. And put a few hooks and eyes on the top.”

Putting together a garment is harder than it looks. Sewing is a complicated process that requires specific tools, a steady eye, and plenty of patience. Anyone can do it, but to be good at it, you need to speak to an expert. This is why Elaine Kauffman lives in the Light Fine Art Building (FAB) costume shop three times a week, dedicated to the integrity of uniquely local art.

Elaine, a highly renowned artist in the Kalamazoo area, distributes her time between costuming the shows in our own theatre, working with personal clients, and making feature pieces for Kalamazoo fashion shows and Art Hops. Her commitment to creating period fashion, depending on the atmosphere of the show, is displayed onstage three-fold.

Take last year’s show, Return to the Forbidden Planet, where Kauffman combined textured materials and metallic finishes to create the galactic, futuristic fashion. Her signature style relies on small details, such as the belts worn by the officers, composed of old-school Nintendo game controller belt buckles and black elastic straps. The key is to think outside the box, placing forgotten elements in unexpected places.

It turns out that Shakespeare has a signature style of his own: creating timeless pieces that can go in any direction. This year’s Balch Festival Playhouse show is The Tempest, and Kauffman chose the direction of 19^th century colonial New England. While these pieces carry a prim bone structure, Kauffman’s modern updates give them new life. She combines the conservative and unorthodox, taking small twists like mid 20^th century accessories, such as Emilia LaPenta’s mod caplet for her role as Prospera. The contemporary updates tie together on stage to create the ethereal backdrop met with stoicism.

Pilgrims with brass buttons and tie-on sleeves are dropped ashore a glistening island of amazement, mostly because of the clash of the color palette. The nymphs’ tie-dye sleepers pair with Todd Espeland’s masks and puppetry in a mischievous whirlwind, confusing the pedantic newcomers. Ariel (Grace McGookey) and Caliban (Cooper Wilson) are an exotic bird and a rainbow fish, respectively, waiting to be tamed in their gauze-covered reserve.

Costumes may be only a small part of creating a distinct world from reality, but it is a large one. Being a fashion designer requires working both the left and the right side of the brain—choosing a time period and keeping all costumes contained within it—including the type of fabric and its construction. Transferring the idea from 2D to 3D is the tricky part, requiring an understanding of conceptualizing the physical from a simple drawing on paper. Being familiar with patterns is the only way to ensure creating quality items, a skill that comes with patience and loads of practice.

Working for four hours in a row may seem like a short day in the real world, but studying and dedication to other activities causes an impossible balance between tranquility and ennui. Hand-sewing snaps, hooks and eyes, and buttons becomes a monotonous task, especially when it is the subject of concentration for several hours. Measure, pin-mark, thread needle, sew, cut string, again. And again, and once more. No talking, no distractions, unless you count listening to Creed on 103.3 fm. Torture ensues.

Yet, in the seclusion of the artificial FAB basement lighting, one discovers holistic solitude. For the dedicated designer, the amount of concentration required for a job like this eventually reaches enlightenment only known by that of Henry David Thoreau. Torture, meet transcendentalism.

Creating a show like The Tempest is seeing the panel of fabric and creating that brave new world—dyes, thread, buttons and all. If your idea of the ideal workspace is speaking less than ten words in an hour while NPR drones in the background, this job is for you. But it also means working your fingers like a prepubescent Malaysian and keeping the blasphemy to a minimum when you screw up. Either way, here’s some advice from one costumer to another: Epsom salts and warm water are your best friend.

Kelly Campbell, Emilia LaPenta, and Cooper Wilson in "The Tempest"

What is interesting about this year’s iteration of The Tempest is that female characters of power have replaced male characters of power.  Prospero is now Prospera, the marooned rightful Dutchess of Milan. Antonio is now Antonia, the bitch sister who stole the throne.  Gonzalo is now Gonzalia, one of the court. Ariel, the sprite who carries out the magical wishes of Prospera, is, too, revealed to be a woman.  Penis has been replaced with vagina, scrotum with ovary, chest with bosom.  Vasa deferentia will not be needed.

The gender swapping of characters is the key to the performance, according to Dramaturg Laura Fox’s program liner notes.  This invites a feminist reading of the play, placing a particular emphasis on the performance’s depiction of the relationship between gender and power.  The play is presented as a direct rejection of the patriarchal notions present in productions of the play applying the original script.  Women playing originally male roles, however, is nothing new at Festival Playhouse.  The company’s presentation of Hamlet two seasons ago featured an all-female cast.  Yet while in that production, women played to stereotypical notions of men, lowering their voices and drawing their swords on crusades to avenge slain fathers, in The Tempest, the women of power are portrayed out of the shadow of perceived notions of masculinity.

Emilia LaPenta’s Prospera is the starkest example of this rejection of traditional masculine-sourced power on stage.  While the scripted lines remain unchanged from those of Prospero, Fox writes that “Miranda’s one parent is no longer a tyrant father, but a matriarch who wields her power over everything and everyone on the island, including Caliban.” How does one wield power “over everything and everyone, including Caliban” without being a tyrant?  By being really passive-aggressive and relatively nice about it.  While she may not shriek or bellow as a tyrant may suggest, Prospera still partakes in all the tyranny of Prospero, fucking with everybody on a whim, exercising control over her daughter Miranda’s (the wonderfully deranged Arkham-worthy Kelly Campbell) prospective love life, and making Caliban feel as small and pathetic as a partially-human being can feel.

Prospera maintains the entirety Prospero’s masculine power, but adds a touch of hostess charm and femininity without ever compromising the Dutchess’s political virility.  This suggests the application of a new lens through which to claim notions of power and control.  Her character is the very opposite of Michael Chodos’ wonderfully power-mad Prospero in last year’s Return to the Forbidden Planet.  While Chodos is nearly six feet tall and appears much larger than in life on the stage, Lapenta is not physically imposing by any means, dwarfed, in fact, by her giant phallus of a staff.  While Forbidden Planet‘s over the top Prospero was costumed in flowing black and gold robes inciting notions of radioactive metal, Prospera is dressed in pink, and wears an Amish-looking bonnet that covers her head.  Furthermore, LaPenta’s delivery is in contrast to Chodos channelling his sonority through his imposing stage presence in order to coerce his minions.  While stern and calculated, Prospera foregoes the overbearing volume and projection one might assume would accompany an all-powerful ruler hell bent on returning to their rightful throne.

LaPenta stands not only as a rejection of Chodos’ tirading patriarchal sorcerer, but also to Michelle Myer’s taciturn, darkly clad dominatrix of a Queen Gertrude in the aforementioned all-women production of Hamlet.  Simply stated, traditional assumptions and projections of power have been left out of The Tempest, intentionally so, and with great affect.

As for the other half, the men of the island are all hopeless fools–and thankfully so.  The prolonged boredom of writer William Shakespeare’s long-winded scene-setting dialogue is not aided in its tediousness by Director Karen’s Berthel’s decision to block Prospera and Miranda upstage, at almost the farthest point from the audience.  They never really move throughout the entirety of their lengthy initial scene, and at times it is difficult to hear them.

Theater is added to the play as in stumbles Stephano, (a convincingly drunk Chodos) and Trinculo, a Fool, played with fantastic jest by the slick and quick-witted Sam Bertken. Trinculo unwittingly couples with a recumbent Caliban, who, upon being discovered and given wine by Stephano, worships the drunk as a god.  The three stumble about their newfound kingdom of an island, and they and their source of power are ultimately and understandably mocked by the rest of the cast.

The only male character with any real claim to power is Alonso, King of Naples, and he is mainly a sap.  Played by Stephano Cagnato, who was absolutely brilliant in this Winter’s Tragedy: A Tragedy, Alonso delivers his lines like giving a satirical news report, and is about as imposing of a ruler in his Thanksgiving dress up like a pilgrim hat as wet cardboard.

Other male characters include Calder Burgam’s Sebastian, who steals all scenes with confidence and acting chops, but who wets his hubris at the tricks of Grace McGookey’s bothersome Ariel, the Airy Spirit.  Rounding out the men is the Dwight Trice’s effeminate Ferdinand.  Trice, however, is far too caught up in preserving some unwanted vestige of presumed masculinity to notice that he’s just a little kid all wrapped up in puppy love.

All in all for a night of Theatre, The Tempest is a lot of bang for your buck. It effectively presents the opportunity to redefine what it means to have power, and what it means for power to be in relationship with gender.  Another impressively intricate display by Festival Playhouse, Shakespeare’s classic work will wow you into a world of mystery and ambition.

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The Tempest continues as part of the Festival Playhouse at Kalamazoo College, Friday and Saturday, May 21 and 22, at 8:00 pm at the Nelda K. Balch Playhouse and on Sunday May 23 at 2:00 pm.  Tickets, $5.00 for students.

Editor’s Note:

The Kosmopolitan Online would like to formally apologize to master builder and Production Design chief Jon Reeves for spelling his name on what might be upwards of seven instances with an “h”. “He might not even be a Jonathan,” we are told.  In a token of repentance, the extraordinary Mr. Reeves will receive a commemorative replica of the one millionth dollar bill donated to the Kosmopolitan Online Charity Foundation.