They arrive at the theater in athleisure, in streetwear, sometimes in style. They come on foot, by subway, or by car service. Then they have an hour or two to change. Literally, of course, via hair, makeup and costumes. Mentally, too, as they ease into character, assuming a new accent, a new gait, a new circumstance, a new attitude. We asked a half-dozen shows to share moments of becoming — transitions from everyday life to storytelling. Here’s what we saw.
‘Fallen Angels’
Photographed by Amir Hamja at the Todd Haimes Theater.
Kelli O’Hara likes a rush of blood before she gets going. Rose Byrne prefers the rush of exhaustion.
The two actresses have parallel routines for clearing their minds each day as they prepare to perform Noël Coward’s century-old sex comedy “Fallen Angels.”
O’Hara, searching for what she calls “emptiness,” stands on her head.
“I do it for the endorphins and the different chemical reaction I get from elevating my legs over my heart,” she said. “Without being too stupid about it, I think it has to do with starting from zero so that you can get back to a loose place.”
Byrne, following an onstage company warm-up, gets there in a different way. “That rush of tiredness, right before the show starts, is my body shutting down a little bit before my adrenaline has to kick in to take flight once you’re up there,” she said. “It’s some sort of nervous system response that’s become habitual — my body starts to get tired, mentally knowing I’m about to undertake this roller coaster of energy.”
(“Fallen Angels” is nominated for five Tony Awards, including best play revival, and for the performances of both Byrne and O’Hara.)
‘Cats: The Jellicle Ball’
Photographed by Vincent Tullo at the Broadhurst Theater.
This “Cats” begins with a gust of glitter. Ken Ard, the only member of the cast who was also in the show’s original company 44 years ago, walks onto the stage with a crate of records that nod to the show’s era (the 1980s) and its aura (queer). He pulls out the original “Cats” album, smiles upon seeing his own name in the liner notes, and blows, from within the gatefold, a burst of glitter.
“I’m blowing life into the audience, wakening the space into what the evening is going to project,” Ard said. “Now the magic begins.”
Everything about Ard’s arrival is meant to set the stage for this reimagined “Cats,” now not about felines, but about dancers from the ballroom scene. His costume features images of ballroom icons, trans heroes and Ard’s own mother and grandmother. “I’m bringing legacy into the space,” he said.
Before each show, Ard and his dressing-room-mate, Sydney James Harcourt, warm up by singing along to Mel Tormé. Ard paints Harcourt’s back with gold. He drinks tea with ginger, turmeric, black pepper, vanilla and orange zest, for longevity. And then he heads to the wings, giving a fist bump to each member of the crew, and waits for a light to go off, signaling his entrance. “I try to repeat the same routine every day,” he said. “It’s an actor’s superstition.”
André De Shields, playing the godlike Old Deuteronomy, is still backstage — his entrance is later, so he has time to drink his electrolytes. He walks, slowly, with his dresser through a darkened corridor, and waits offstage for his cue.
“I’m standing behind a mylar curtain, building the character,” he said. “I part the curtain, stand in a fixed position, and allow the audience to feed me with shouts of joy and respect and admiration and whatever else they’re thinking. Let the people have what they came for. Apotheosis.”
(“Cats: The Jellicle Ball” is nominated for nine Tony Awards, including best musical revival, and for De Shields’s performance.)
‘Schmigadoon!’
Photographed by Vincent Tullo at the Nederlander Theater.
Everyone is so nice in “Schmigadoon!” Well, everyone except Mildred Layton, the minister’s wife. That’s the character Ana Gasteyer plays, and she’s the villain in the story.
Gasteyer has plenty of stage experience, but the history she tends to draw on, as she builds her character, is her time in comedy.
“People from my particular background, which is ‘Saturday Night Live,’ which is sketch, work very quickly,” she said. “There is no process. It’s all instinct and cold read and making choices and committing to them.”
She gets to the theater early, because she likes to chat. There’s a lot of vocal warm-up, because her character likes to scream.
There are steamers and nebulizers, tinctures and sprays, plus a humidifier, and a red light neck mask that supposedly prevents inflammation. “It helps plants grow in space, according to the internet,” she said, “so I figure it can’t hurt!”
There’s even a coup de théâtre. “The Broadway secret society has all been buying this red light butt plug that goes up your nose,” she said. That’s to clear the sinuses.
But the real moment of becoming, for Gasteyer, happens with costume, hair and makeup. “I’m a sketch comedian, so we famously say wigs make the character,” she said. “The corset is tight, which makes it incredibly hard to sing a patter song, but also at the same time keeps me rigid. She has a giant bustle, which I think suits the character significantly — she likes to leave a lot in her wake. And I don’t think I could put that costume on without walking like Mildred. They go hand in hand.”
(“Schmigadoon!” is nominated for 12 Tony Awards, including best musical, as well as for Gasteyer’s performance.)
‘Every Brilliant Thing’
Photographed by Vincent Tullo at the Hudson Theater.
By the time most people get inside the Hudson Theater, where Daniel Radcliffe is starring in the one-man show “Every Brilliant Thing,” the actor is already dashing around the theater, looking for patrons willing to read a line off a card, or ad lib a small part in the play.
So when the time comes to start, Radcliffe needs a way to signal the shift — that moment when selection ends and storytelling begins.
He had heard that Ambika Mod, a British comedian who had performed the play on London’s West End last fall, would do a little dance to mark the moment of transition. But Radcliffe, despite starring 15 years ago in a dance-heavy Broadway musical, didn’t see himself doing that. “I’m not going to do a dance,” he thought. “That doesn’t feel very me.”
Instead, he circles up, onstage in full view of anyone paying attention, with his two associate directors and a stage manager. They run through a punch list to make sure he’s ready (on occasion, Radcliffe has forgotten to choose someone to portray a veterinarian). And then, “we do this silly, arms-crossed, shaking each other’s hands, group-hug kind of thing,” Radcliffe said. “They leave. I do one more walk around the square, and then we’re off.”
If not everyone catches the unfolding shift, that’s OK. “If I can go straight in, and just start the play, and almost catch people by surprise with it, that’s my ideal,” he said. “My ideal version is that the play starts without you noticing.”
(“Every Brilliant Thing” is nominated for two Tony Awards, including best play revival, and for Radcliffe’s performance.)
‘Joe Turner’s Come and Gone’
Photographed by George Etheredge at the Ethel Barrymore Theater.
“What I love about theater,” Taraji P. Henson said, “is that you have to put the character on.”
She means that in tangible ways — the costumes and the makeup that she puts on eight times a week to make her look less like the 21st-century movie star she is, and more like the 1911 boardinghouse operator she plays in “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.”
But she also means it spiritually. “I live with her every day,” she said of her character, Bertha Holly, whom she sees as “the mother, the nurturer, the glue, the moral compass” in the show. “I don’t think I ever really put her away.”
Before each performance, she removes the anachronisms from her body — she puts makeup over the tattoo of her son’s name, Marcell, near an arm vein that connects to her heart, and she puts felt over the flat back studs in her ears.
She skims through the script, drinks a tablespoon of olive oil and warms up her voice. And then, just before each performance, she joins the rest of the cast in a prayer circle, followed by a Black history lesson from one of the show’s featured actors, Ruben Santiago-Hudson.
“We are healing people with this work, we are inspiring people with this work, and that’s not taken lightly,” Henson said.
“This story is our ancestors’,” she added, “and we have to tell it properly.”
(“Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” is nominated for five Tony Awards, including for Santiago-Hudson’s performance, and for costume design.)
‘Death of a Salesman’
Photographed by George Etheredge at the Winter Garden Theater.
Willy Loman, the salesman of “Death of a Salesman,” arrives onstage at the Winter Garden looking stooped, haggard, tired. For Nathan Lane, the actor playing the role, “that’s the easiest thing to access.”
“That’s easy,” he said, “because I am exhausted!”
Lane is a towering figure on Broadway, a three-time Tony winner who has appeared in two dozen shows over a four-decade career. And Loman is a towering role — the title character of one of the great plays in American history.
“The play is asking a lot,” Lane said. “But that’s the reason I wanted to do it. I’m happiest when I’m climbing this kind of mountain.”
Each night, after a gripe session with his co-star, Laurie Metcalf, and then the actors who play their sons, he’ll reread the script, or rerun the first scene in his head, and think about where Loman has been that day, and why he’s coming home.
He dons what he calls “the saddest suit ever made,” clambers into Loman’s burgundy Chevrolet, checks on his voice, and then, as a final gesture before driving that car onto the stage, turns up one collar of his raincoat, “so I look a little disheveled.” “I can’t let go of that,” he said. “The rest is just my own private thoughts about this descent into hell.”
“I’m very big on preparation, and research, and reading everything’s that’s been written, and then you have to let go of it,” he added. “I have to banish all the ghosts of past productions, and just try to go on the journey of the last 24 hours of this man’s life. That’s how you create your own Willy Loman.”
(“Death of a Salesman” is nominated for nine Tony Awards, including best play revival, and for the performances of both Lane and Metcalf.)
Michael Paulson is the theater reporter for The Times.
The post How the Stars of 6 Tony-Nominated Shows Get Into Character appeared first on New York Times.
