Glass slipper still fits for Broadway legend
Six-time Tony Award-winning costume designer William Ivey Long’s heart always belongs to Cinderella
To win one Tony Award is significant. To win six is exceptional. Exceptional is also a word that everyone from Hugh Jackman to the cast of the Rocky Horror Picture Show TV movie has used to describe the creations of costume designer William Ivey Long.
The 69-year-old’s resumé includes some of the biggest hit shows in Broadway history: The Producers, Hairspray, Nine, Grey Gardens, Young Frankenstein, and Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella.
For Long, this musical version of Cinderella has always held a special place in his heart.
“It was originally created for Julie Andrews, fresh from the success of My Fair Lady, for a CBC Television special filmed live at the Ed Sullivan Theater where they did David Letterman,” said Long.
“I was 10 years old and you know I watched it, people were even buying TV sets just to see it. Fifty-six years later, I’m asking Julie Andrews, who is now my friend, for input on the show.”
Among the information shared by the celebrated star was the fact that her entire transformation from scullery maid to vision in a tiara happened live in front of the camera. Using close ups, lighting and suspension of belief of the audience, everything from her clothes to her hair was altered on stage while she was still singing.
“That’s real magic — to do that all in such a brilliant but effectively lowtech way just gave me goosebumps,” he said.
“So I brought that into our show, and we have our Cinderella transforming while she’s singing, too. So much of what we do in this job is a kind of magic act, and I was very happy with it.”
Typically, a production such as Cinderella would have a magic consultant to glean how to pull off the stage and lighting sleight of hand so often seen in big musicals. In his 71 Broadway shows, Long says he has often worked with these consultants to develop clothes that complement the tricks.
“But I asked the producer to get the chance to do the magic, because it wasn’t rainstorms into lightning, but the magic of changing dresses,” Long said.
“And I really wanted to do it right in front of everyone’s eyes as far down to the front of the proscenium as possible. Laura Osnes was our first Cinderella, and she was critical to it all coming together because she is game for anything and has an iron composure.”
Crediting both the willing actor and Julie Andrews’ story, the entire scheme was put together in white muslin roughs and filmed for the producers. They liked it, and soon the final fabric creations were being used. It worked brilliantly — Long won his sixth Tony for the costuming in Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella.
Playwright Douglas Carter Beane adapted the original broadcast book to give the characters more genuine humanity and less idealized perfection. The score was long a favourite of Rodgers and Hammerstein, but Beane’s script spares any Disney saccharine. He preferred author Charles Perrault’s 1697 fairy tale; itself a nudge and a wink satire on French society and politics. Long ran with this for his designs, too, with a number of reviewers noting how effectively the clothes for the wicked stepmother and sisters conveyed their personalities.
Long jokes that there is one Disney cartoon classic element that remains in this new adaptation.
“We became the birds and other animals flitting around Cinderella to transform her,” he laughs.
Every show he works on, he obsesses over. His work ethic is well known, and he attends almost every show he’s done and frequently the remounts as well, looking all the time with a critical eye.
“I always carry around a legal-sized notepad, and am constantly taking notes, making sketches and thinking about things,” said Long.
“Although we have about a dozen computers at my studio, I still like to do most of it by hand, right up to making maquette (small scale) dolls to run through all the transformations and show to the producers and the cameramen. That was how I set up Grease Live!”
That broadcast netted Long his first Emmy nominations. While he is firmly committed to the stage over film and TV, he is always willing to step out and try something new. He even dressed the Rolling Stones for the band’s 1989 Steel Wheels tour. Sadly, no micro-Mick and Keith dolls were ever made.