Show costumer up to task of dress with 50 buttons
As designer for wigs and costumes for Pearl Theater’s Civil War-era show “Little Women: The Musical,” Lynne Fredrichsen knows she has a crucial role in the production.
The stakes are high — “If you don’t have good costumes in a play that’s set during the Civil War, the magic isn’t there,” said Kathleen Hart, who portrays Marmee in the production through March 20. “It distracts you from the storyline.
“She did a fantastic job,” Hart said. “She also does the laundry. Things get wrinkled; so she comes in before performances and fluffs things up so that we look fabulous.”
Fredrichsen, a Pearland resident, also works as coordinator of payroll and benefits for Theatre Under the Stars in Houston.
“I work in musical theater; so of course I think a musical version of ‘Little Women’ is a clever idea,” she said.
The show is based on the beloved classic by Louisa May Alcott. Like the semi auto biographical 1869 novel, the 2005 Broadway musical follows the adventures of Jo, who weaves the story of herself and her sisters and their experiences growing up in Civil War America, said director Brennan Blankenship.
“I enjoy the story and I’ve always been intrigued by 19th-century fashion,” Fredrichsen said. “It is very feminine. I love the curves and the textures and colors of the fabrics.”
Hart said that her favorite costume is “a traveling dress” that Marmie wears before boarding a train headed from her home in Concord, Massachusetts, to Washington, D.C., to care for her husband, a UnionArmy chaplain who gets injured.
“It’s made to look like 50 buttons down the front, but clever Lynne, she puts snaps behind them so I wouldn’t have to spend 20 minutes buttoning andunbuttoning,” said Hart.
Fredrichsen handsewed some of the costumes but borrowedothers from area theaters.
Sarah Berggren of Friendswood, who plays Meg, wears a silk skirt Lynne obtained from the Alley Theatre in Houston after it was worn by the character of Cecily, the “country girl,” in a production of Oscar Wilde’s ”The Importance of Being Earnest.”
“Lynne also put me in a really long red, curly wig,” said Berggren. “When I put it on, it’s the final detail and changes theway I look. I wear a hoop skirt, then I pull the dress over my wig and gown before I secure the front. I step into it, and I button it and close it.”
Fredrichsen graduated from Dobie High School in Pasadena in 1982, where she was the features editor for the school newspaper.
She spent five years at the University of Texas, mostly toiling in the theater department’s costume shop once it was learned that her grandmother had taught her to sew when Fredrichsen was young.
At TUTS, Fredrichsen first put her wardrobe talents to use in amusical version of the 1959 movie classic “Some Like it Hot.”
A highlight of her career was doing hair for actress Holland Taylor in the preBroadway tour of “Ann,” a biography of former Texas Gov. Ann Richards.