Sunday Herald (Sydney, NSW : 1949 - 1953), Sunday 19 June 1949, page 10


Husband Wrote The Play; Wife Designed The Clothes

FOR months past, pages of script, sketches of costume designs,

scraps of material samples, have cluttered up the Balmoral home of Mr. and Mrs. Max Afford as this husband and wife team worked together on the Minerva Theatre's new production, "Dark Enchantment."_

Mr. Afford, the well-known I Australian writer, is the author of the play and his petite blueeyed wife has designed the cos-tumes. 4

The inevitable last-minute rush for the opening night on June 27 will mean a constant, shuttle service between thc Afford home and the theatre.

Formerly Miss Thelma Thomas, of Adelaide, Mrs. Afford has been designing cos

MRS. MAX AFFORD, with some of her Edwardian

designs for the costumes in her husband's new play.

tûmes for films and the theatre since before her marriage. In the past 18 months she has cos-tumed more than a dozen plays for the Whitehall productions.

"Period costumes give a de-signer far more scope than mod-ern clothes,". Mrs. Afford said.

"After the designing of thc clothes comes the really hard work, when I have to start look-ing for materials. For one dress in 'Dark Enchantment' 1 thought of a vivid purple. I found thc shade 1 wanted, but when I tried it under the stage lights it looked a dead black, so 1 started all over again." ' ..

Mr. and Mrs. Afford met working together-she was chosen to design the clothes for his prize-winning play, "Colonel Light," during Adelaide's cen-tenary celebrations.

Since then they have only, worked' together on one other play, "Awake, My Love," which was presented at the Indepen-

dent Theatre in 1947.