'Mary T. & Lizzy K.' fashions relationship of Lincoln's wife and her dressmaker

With actress Naomi Jacobson perched on a stand as she's fitted for a gown in Arena Stage's "Mary T. & Lizzy K.," an audience learns what's in and what's out in mid-19th-century haute couture. Out, explains Mary Todd Lincoln's dressmaker, Elizabeth Keckly (Sameerah Luqmaan-Harris), are the wide, pagoda-shaped undergarments that cleared a woman's path like the cowcatcher of a freight train. "In" is the sleeker boning of the "crinoline cage," a style the fashionable but not entirely fashion-forward...