It’s been a whirlwind year for San Diego designer David I. Reynoso, who earned his first Tony nomination for costume design last spring for Broadway’s “Water for Elephants.” Eleven months later, he is ready to debut to his latest costume project: The Old Globe’s world premiere musical “Regency Girls,” which opens Thursday. It’s a road-trip comedy about four young women breaking free of societal mores in England’s Regency era.
Not every new musical or play makes it to Broadway, but if “Regency Girls” is lucky enough to make the leap, Reynoso said the experience would be especially sweet.
When he moved to San Diego in 2011, Reynoso didn’t know a soul in the city. So he cold-called all the theaters in town and the first place he was hired was the Old Globe’s costume shop. Since then, he has worked on more than a dozen Globe shows, many as lead costume designer, and even as a scenic designer. Although he continues to work at theaters all over the country, Reynoso said the Globe will always be his creative home.
“The Globe has a proud history of taking shows to Broadway. The idea of a pre-Broadway run for a musical at my artistic home, and being part of the creative team who may potentially be taking it to the next level? It’s a full circle moment for me,” he said. “Having them with me at this time, when they’ve seen me grow in my trajectory, it feels like a collective sense of arrival. We’re all growing together, not just me who’s deg this. It’s always an incredible team effort.”
Over the course of his career, Reynoso has designed costumes from dozens of time periods, as well as different countries, and even timeless fantasy periods. But this is the first time he has designed costumes from England’s Regency era, which took place from 1811 to 1820.
Old Globe’s new ‘Regency Girls’ musical will be a Jane Austen-style road trip comedy
During those years, George, the Prince of Wales, took over the throne as Prince Regent while his father, King George III, battled prolonged mental health issues. Because of the Prince Regent’s great interest in fashion, art, music and and literature, the era became known for an elevation in style, refinement and elegance. For Americans not familiar with fashions from that time, the Netflix series “Bridgerton” is set within the Regency era.
Like every costume designer, Reynoso said he devoted many hours to studying Regency era history and clothing. But that was just the first step in the process, because theatrical costume design involves understanding the story being told onstage, the characters’ relationships with each other, how the characters see themselves and how others see them.
“What’s so interesting about clothing of the Regency era is it felt like a lot of work went into defining gender roles in their clothing. For the masculine clothes, there’s an architecture to it, with high collars and tailoring that reflects how someone is presented in their body. And the same is true for women’s clothing, in of their place in the society and how they are viewed. It feels somehow visually vulnerable with a quality of softness and delicacy.”
But “Regency Girls” is not a traditional period piece. It’s about characters from the Regency era reimagined through a contemporary lens.
“The thing that inspires me most about this story,” Reynoso said, “is its universality of allowing yourself to break free from cultural expectations put upon you and to imagine a new reality for yourself and explore what might be expected of you,” Reynoso said. “It’s a story about taking hold of your own destiny, and the idea of giving sort of celebration to the fact that we have that agency as human beings and everyone deserves that agency. Whether or not we agree with each other’s choices, everyone is entitled to that decision for themselves.”
Reynoso said the script for “Regency Girls” gives a “wink and a nod” to the idea of breaking free of societal norms, so he infused that same sense of creative rebellion or conformity in the characters’ costumes. For example, one of the male characters in the story named Dingley will wear two vests on top of one other, which Reynoso said was inspired by the early 2000s clothing trend when fashionable young men wore two layered Polo shirts with their collars popped up.
“You understand him when you see it,” Reynoso said. “We’re nodding to more contemporary allusions.”
Reynoso’s “Regency Girls” assignment follows a project last fall that was especially close to his heart. He designed costumes for Pasadena Playhouse’s production of “La Cage aux Folles,” directed by Broadway darling Sam Pinkleton (“Oh, Mary!”). The musical comedy is about a French gay couple who own a drag nightclub. Reynoso said the show was in production during election season, and as a gay man, he felt the show’s warmth and positivity buoyed his spirits and those of others who are likely to be impacted by the Trump istration’s conservative agenda.
“It was a way to stand together and feel empowered by the work that we do, both to comfort and stand firm with each other,” Reynoso said. “What a gift we have as artists to offer that. We can be thought-provoking and challenging, but also provide inspiration and beauty and care with the work that we make.”
Since the Tony nomination, Reynoso said many offers for costume design work have come his way. But that increased exposure has also provided him the liberty to explore other creative realms.
“Working on ‘Regency Girls’ is like a rite of age from the Tony experience,” Reynoso said. “It allowed me to consider this idea that, when you don’t realize your career is growing, you get something mirrored back to you that allows you to evaluate and celebrate the progress you’ve made. The Tony nomination felt like such a milestone for me. But it also freed me up to imagine what else am I interested in exploring that’s potentially beyond my reach.”
For many years, Reynoso has produced immersive, bilingual theater productions through his San Diego company Optika Moderna. But in more recent years, he has also designed immersive and avant-garde exhibits at museums and cultural institutions, including the New Children’s Museum downtown and the Museum of Us in Balboa Park. He has also created three exhibits for the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Indiana.
These have included exhibits about the Mayan people, the experiences of undocumented migrants who crossed the Sonoran Desert from Mexico, Islamic fashion and Indiana’s historic Angel Mounds, which are the remains of Native American villages dating from the 10th to 13th centuries.
“We do everything from avant-garde experiences to working with museums and cultural institutions to reimagine how they present exhibits,” Reynoso said. “It’s within the idea of creating bold experiences that allows visitors to look at something from a viewpoint they haven’t experienced themselves.”
