TARTUFFE, THE IMPOSTER

Written by Molière and adapted by John Donnelly

Tartuffe, the imposter follows a present day affluent family living in Highgate, London as the father, Orgon gets enthralled by Tartuffe a charismatic cult leader/ spiritual guru. The play explores themes of loyalty, the weight of moral corruption, and misplaced trust. The family sees right through Tartuffe and his plan to take over the house and try and set up traps to expose his true intentions to Orgon

In my design I chose to lean into the hypocrisy of the family and their socio-economic status creating caricatures of their character stereotypes, leaning into this from the offset. For the opening party scene I designed the costume based on how they are outwardly perceived or how they perceive themselves. For example, designing Damis as Hercules as he thinks he can “save the day” at several points within the play. I also drew inspiration from upper class pop culture such as Tatler and Made in Chelsea. For Tartuffe (and therefore the acolytes), i looked into cult leaders as well as spiritual gurus and experimented with different styles with the director, eventually landing on an orange inspired by Father Yod

THE TEAM

‍Director - Claire Brown Set Design - Lo Money Costume Design - Katie Torbitt Lighting Design - Danny Connaire ‍ Costume Makers - Radha Harrison and Dotty Squibb Costume Assistants - Yi Wang (Alexie) Yongqain Chen, and Alice Edgar

Photographer - Simon Gough