Ben
Brantley

October 23, 2015

And the movie stars who agonize over getting dressed for red carpet photo ops think they have it tough. Consider, please, the labor — and the layers, oh, the layers — that go into creating the illusion of supreme majesty as it was practiced by the woman who gave the Elizabethan Age its name. In a triumphant scene in the Compagnia de’ Colombari’s “texts&beheadings/ElizabethR,” a glittering mosaic portrait of a queen now at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, we are given a royal laundry list of every piece of apparel worn by its title character for a ceremonial appearance. So we have the underskirts, overskirts, stockings, bodice, farthingale, corset, wig, gloves, fan, jewelry. These accouterments are itemized with detailed period descriptions as three actresses mime assembling this wardrobe on the impatient form of a fourth one, Juliana Francis-Kelly, who stands tall on a tall chair within a flickeringly illuminated rectangle. (John Conklin did the sets, and Peter Ksander the lighting.) The clothes may be invisible to the audience’s eyes. But as Ms. Francis-Kelly staggers and then grows beneath each successive layer, we feel their full, oppressive weight, literally and metaphorically.