The story of Depraved has change into, over time, one merely full of astonishing figures—and I don’t solely imply the likes of Idina Menzel, Kristin Chenoweth, Shoshana Bean, and Annaleigh Ashford. Twenty-one years: That’s how lengthy the present has been operating at New York’s Gershwin Theatre. $1.66 billion: That’s how a lot it’s grossed on Broadway, at time of writing. Twenty-five: That’s what number of actors have performed Elphaba in that manufacturing full-time. (There have been 22 Glindas.) Add to that the 238 costume modifications, 226 pairs of footwear, and 84 wigs per efficiency, and one’s eyes start to water a bit. It’s loads—however then once more, isn’t “loads” kind of Depraved ’s complete factor? It’s a giant present in regards to the powers of excellent and evil, with a speaking goat, flying monkeys, and a spiky love triangle thrown in for good measure.
The staff charged with turning Depraved right into a two-part movie-musical extravaganza starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande has actually embraced its muchness. For costume designer Paul Tazewell (a Tony winner for Hamilton and an Oscar nominee for Steven Spielberg’s West Aspect Story), the mission had three primary references: Gregory Maguire’s Depraved: The Life and Occasions of the Depraved Witch of the West, the 1995 novel exploding the world of L. Frank Baum’s The Fantastic Wizard of Oz that impressed Depraved ’s plot; The Wizard of Oz, Victor Fleming’s basic 1939 movie adaptation of Baum’s e book; and the Broadway present itself, with its nice Stephen Schwartz rating, e book by Winnie Holzman (who additionally wrote the brand new movie’s screenplay), and devoted fan base. “It was necessary to have interaction that viewers,” Tazewell says, “and never utterly redefine what Depraved looks like.”
Like Susan Hilferty, who designed the stage manufacturing’s Tony-winning costumes, Tazewell made the earth and the air his lodestars whereas constructing the wardrobes of Depraved ’s two central characters: the green-skinned outcast Elphaba, portrayed onscreen by Erivo, and the girlish, blond-tressed Glinda, performed by Grande. (Different necessary gamers embrace Michelle Yeoh’s sensible and wily Madame Morrible, headmistress of Shiz College, the place Elphaba and Glinda meet; Jonathan Bailey’s dashing Fiyero, their shared love curiosity; and Jeff Goldblum’s charlatanic Wizard of Oz.)
“I had already recognized Paul for a very long time as a result of he had designed the costumes for Harriet”—the 2019 Harriet Tubman drama wherein she starred—“and [we] had this deep understanding of what it’s to permit a personality to specific themselves by means of the garments they put on,” Erivo says. When she had an concept for Elphaba’s glasses, her pajamas, or her footwear—“I mentioned to [Paul], ‘I’d love for the heel of my boot to get larger as we transfer on in her story’”—he honored it. She and Tazewell agreed that “No piece of costume is frivolous,” Erivo says. “All the things has a use, and all the pieces is significant.”
“You might have a look at any shoe, any button—you can contact any of them, they usually inform our story,” provides director Jon M. Chu, himself a longtime Depraved fan who first encountered the present throughout its pre-Broadway tryout in San Francisco.
Whereas Elphaba, a fighter who dangers her security to guard the animals of Oz, is outfitted largely in glazed bark fabric, mushroom pleats, and the sober, restrictive silhouettes of Victorian mourning gown at the beginning of her arc, Glinda the Good Witch, perennially widespread and irrepressibly peppy, represents “all that’s air-bound and effervescent,” Tazewell explains. His idea for her ethereal “bubble gown”—maybe probably the most well-known costume within the present—took visible cues from motifs each tangible (butterflies) and summary (the Fibonacci spiral).
“Paul Tazewell is probably the most good human being on the planet, from his shapes to the colour story to the thoughtfulness behind every look,” says Grande. On the busiest manufacturing days, Tazewell commanded a workshop of over 100, amongst them couture-level tailors and dressmakers, weavers and embroiders, hand-felters, knitters, milliners, shoemakers, armorers, and jewelry-makers, together with specialists in 3D-printing and laser manipulation. It was, in each method, a full-court press—albeit one pushed by a spirit of enchantment.
