Costumes Are A Challenge In Fanciful "Beauty"

Costumes are a challenge in fanciful 'Beauty'

BY JENN MCKEE

PHOTO BY MYRA KLARMAN

Jon Wardner and Karen Ostafinski star in the Burns Park Players' 25th anniversary performance, "Disney's Beauty and the Beast."

Talking candlesticks and wardrobes and china may sound trippy, but for those familiar with “Disney’s Beauty and the Beast” - now being staged by the Burns Park Players - these elements are a familiar part of the “tale as old as time.”

Inspired by the smash 1991 animated film, the stage musical focuses on Belle, a beautiful girl frustrated by the limitations of her French provincial town. When her eccentric inventor father is taken prisoner by a castle-dwelling Beast, Belle offers to take her father’s place, and soon, she discovers that the Beast’s castle is enchanted. However, there’s more to these magical creatures, and the Beast himself, than initially meets the eye.

“What we’ve been really working on is making it not just ‘Disney’s Beauty and the Beast,’ but ‘Burns Park Players’ Beauty and the Beast,”’ said Alex Puette, a junior in U-M’s musical theater program who is directing the production. “Most people are used to the movie, and we’ve tried to steer it as far away from that as possible, but still maintain the iconic moments of the show.”

With this in mind, BPP’s set designers, Jeri Rosenberg and Mark Tucker, have applied a painterly, storybook aesthetic to the show. And since part of what distinguishes BPP from other nonprofit amateur theater groups is that it’s made up of both students and adults who live in the Burns Park school area, the folks at the show’s helm had to be creative about working in loads of young people.

“It helped that a former choreographer of ours, (U-M musical theater alumnus) Garrett Miller, ... was the pepper shaker in the Broadway production for almost two years,” said BPP producer Susan Hurwitz. “Garrett said that as he was doing eight performances a week, and ... he kept thinking, how would we do this with Burns Park? He had all these great ideas. ... He’s now at Stanford getting his MBA, but he has the same fond and warm spot in his heart (for BPP) that all of us do.”

BPP’s “Beauty” cast and crew consists of 260 people, who range in age from 6 to 87. The adults involved are generally working professionals of various stripes; and while many get involved with BPP when their children enter the school system, they often keep coming back long after the kids have moved on.

“It’s been such a great catharsis for me, and I think for a lot of people, to leave their day jobs or professional careers behind and go and pretend like you’re somebody else,” said Clinch Steward, who plays Lumiere. (“Beauty” marks Steward’s 15th show with BPP) “Somebody equated it to adult camp, where a lot of times, you don’t regularly see people for 10 months out of the year, and then for eight weeks in a row,... you’re seeing them continuously.”

For his role, Steward’s been honing a French accent; but because he plays an oh-so-suave candlestick, Steward also has a fanciful costume with which to contend. “A lot of the fantasy characters - Cogsworth, the Wardrobe, the Beast - are really a combination between costumes and sets,” explained Steward.

“Some of these costumes are just massive,” said Puette. “We just started using costumes this week, and we had to rework some scenes ... because the costumes were too big, and they were blocking other people.”

Of course, such technical glitches will get ironed out before the curtain goes up. And then, proceeds from the show will go to support arts education in the Ann Arbor Public Schools. But the benefits of BPP are often more personal in nature. Hurwitz noted, for instance, that at a recent rehearsal, the actress playing Belle had to be somewhere else for an hour, so while the cast rehearsed the show’s final scene, the 10-year-old daughter of Jon Wardner (who plays the Beast) temporarily stepped into the role of Belle.

“She’d been to all the rehearsals,” said Hurwitz. “So she just got up and danced with her dad, and it was one of those moments where you sit back and say, ‘This is what I like about this group.’”

Jenn McKee can be reached at 734-994-6841 orjmckee@ annarbornews.com.

PREVIEW

'Beauty and the Beast'

Who: The Burns Park Players.

What: Disney musical (with songs by Alan Menken, Howard Ashman, and Tim Rice) about a young woman who's held prisoner by a beast.

Where: Tappan Middle School auditorium, 2251 E. Stadium Blvd. in Ann Arbor.

When: 7:30 p.m. Friday and 4 p.m. Saturday, through Feb. 16. (Also, the last dress rehearsal, on Thursday, Feb. 7 at 7:30 p.m., will be open to the public.)

How much: Reserved seating costs $15, while premium seating, including reserved parking, costs $30. (Tickets for the final dress rehearsal will be $5 at the door.)

Info: Reserved seating tickets available at Morgan and York Market, 1928 Packard in Ann Arbor, or at the door starting one hour before the show. For premium seating tickets, contact Colleen Kollman at colleenkollman@aol.com, or at 734-478-0449.