Manchester audiences can see how a major regional theatre makes and cares for its performance clothes, after the Royal Exchange opened Mythic Reinvention, a free exhibition marking the venue's 50th anniversary. The show selects items from the theatre's more than 25,000-piece costume archive and invites visitors behind the curtain to inspect construction, repair and storage practices; it runs until 15 November.
The Royal Exchange first opened in September 1976 with Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals inside a seven-sided tubular steel ring set within the city centre's Victorian hall. Selina Cartmell, the theatre’s creative director, described the contrast between the modern inner structure and the old pillars, saying, "It sits almost like a spaceship inside this extraordinary great Victorian Hall with all the pillars so already you have this tension." She added that the auditorium's intimate scale shaped the company's approach to staging, noting the designers "created a theatre of 750 seats in the round, a democratic arena where the alchemy between actor and audience is at its most purest form and they've created something that still feels fresh today."
Mythic Reinvention was curated by designer Leslie Travers, who praised both the archive’s extent and its condition. "To think there are so many pieces of costume here from so many productions," he said. "I think Manchester should be incredibly proud of this building because the costume-making is world famous. It is like couture. It's amazing that these costumes, some of them are 50 years old but they look brand new. They've been so well looked after." The exhibition foregrounds the in-house production process, with displays that explain how the costume department designs items to withstand the scrutiny of in-the-round performances.
Across five decades the Royal Exchange has hosted prominent names on its stage, including Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren in 1981, Hugh Grant in 1986, Andrew Garfield in 2004's Cares, Maxine Peake in 2015 and Don Warrington as King Lear in 2016. Organisers say Mythic Reinvention is intended to celebrate the many individuals whose craft underpins the theatre’s work, offering both theatre fans and general visitors a closer look at material culture that has largely been stored offstage until now.
The exhibition is free to enter and open through 15 November, forming part of the theatre's wider fiftieth-anniversary programme and providing a public moment to recognise conservation and creative labour that typically remain out of sight.
