Ian on Facebook asked us about the ‘Dumpy’ costume, and what stopped us making the character even fatter.
He wondered if there were issues of manoeuverability for the dancer playing the part, which is indeed one contributing factor, as was a desire to move away from the pantomimic tone of previous productions of the story. The characters deserved to be laughed at, but they had to retain a realism in order for the threat that they posed to the heroine to be believable.
David himself explained another factor however. ‘There wasn’t a way of making their hands or the heads any fatter, so if we’d made the bodies bigger and bigger and bigger, eventually the character would have looked ridiculously out of proportion. We can pad every other part of the suit, but not the hands and especially not the head.
Here’s another chance to see one of David’s earliest video diaries, recorded nearly a year ago, in which he discusses the roles of the sisters.
