All five of this year’s Tony Award nominees for Best Costume Design of a Musical were tasked with transporting audiences to a distinct time period. For “Hell’s Kitchen,” it’s 1990s Manhattan. “Water for Elephants” travels to the Depression era of the 1930s with a traveling circus. Across the pond, “Cabaret” invites audiences to 1929 Berlin. Always idealized, “The Great Gatsby” conjures the Roaring ’20s Jazz Age on a fictionalized cove of Long Island. “Suffs” rewinds even further to 1913 when suffragists fought for women’s right to vote.
Beyond time and place, the costume design of a musical must also communicate individuality in each character — and serve the practicality of choreography, quick-changes and more. Here, all five nominees — Dede Ayite, David Israel Reynoso, Linda Cho, Paul Tazewell and Tom Scutt — decipher the narratives embedded in the costume designs of their shows.
