Brett Harwood, director of "Children of Eden," the season-closing production for Army Community Theatre, had a vision for the musical's costumes: avant-garde, abstract and artistic.

"Children of Eden" covers the first 10 chapters of the Book of Genesis, beginning with the creation and ending after the flood, so Harwood had to create the Garden of Eden and Noah's Ark, with characters to match the setting and theme.

"What's desired with these costumes is something not unlike the 'Lion King,' " Harwood explained. And he couldn't find that in a local storeroom.

Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel on a budget, then, Harwood looked to the Mainland.

He saw what he was looking for in costumes developed by Tony Award-winning costume director Gregg Barnes for the Paper Mill Theatre in New Jersey, which had also staged "Children of Eden." (Barnes has also created the costumes for "Legally Blonde" on Broadway.) But the costumes had been sold.

Tracking them to their current owner, actress Georgina Simon, Army Community Theatre was able to rent the costumes at a price they could afford.

"Then we had to ship 800 pounds of costumes. It was an adventure from beginning to end," Harwood said. "It was four pallets of crates and involved a crew of devoted moms to unpack everything."

They used all the seats in the theater to drape the costumes as they put the pieces together. "We were able to costume nearly the entire show. Some of them are just out of this world beautiful," Harwood gushed.

The costumes are, in a word, amazing.

"They're all made with the weirdest things. If you look up close, you find a ripped-up wicker basket, an old tennis racket — all very odd but suggestive of the animal," Harwood said admiringly. They're made with recycled materials — leaves, berries and flowers. They have a very organic feel. Everything but the kitchen sink is sunk into these things."

There were a few broken pieces, so helpers went shopping in souvenir shops to find hula skirts and other Island-inspired materials to complete the repairs. Harwood has high praise for the parents of the 14 children appearing in the production, who played a major role in getting the production off the ground.

It will be interesting to see the Honolulu audience's reactions to the costumes, and the production. Not only are the costumes avant-garde, Harwood is even playing with time, weaving the contemporary with biblical times. Case in point: alligators on skateboards.

Harwood said it would be impossible to create a Garden of Eden and Noah's Ark that would match peoples' visions, so the set is also fantastical. He takes an abstract approach, mixing contemporary industrial plastics and earthy organic fibers. "Eden takes on an unidentifiable ethnic look: biblical, Arabian, Turkish, Persian, African, Polynesian. It's about the world being peopled," Harwood explained.