How Jordan Roth’s Swarovski-Encrusted Tonys Outfit Was Impressed by ‘Into the Woods’

“In about 20 minutes, I’ll be going to hair and make-up prep,” he informed Self-importance Honest over the cellphone on Friday, two days earlier than the fête celebrating the very best of the 2022-2023 theatrical season. “For an evening like this, we at all times do a dry run.” It’s an opportunity to make any last-minute refinements to the look, seize photographs of the total ensemble, and likewise assist decide what time his Sunday will truly begin—he’s guessing midday, however that is determined by how the run-through goes. “Topic to vary,” he notes.
Roth, the theater producer and president of Jujamcyn Theaters, is as well-known for his high-fashion model as he’s for his high-profile performs (he has seven Tony Awards to his title, together with wins for Kinky Boots, Hadestown, Moulin Rouge! The Musical, and final 12 months’s gender-flipped tackle Firm). This 12 months, he’s nominated for the heart-swelling new staging of Into the Woods, which is among the many contenders for finest revival of a musical and impressed the Ludovic de Saint Sernin design he’s sporting on Tonys night time.
Two characters from the beloved Sondheim musical about fairy-tale characters attempting to meet their deepest needs—after which discovering what occurs after they arrive true—supplied the largest factors of inspiration: Little Pink Using Hood, whose sartorial selections communicate for themselves and are a key piece of the present’s iconography, and the Witch, with all her thriller and magic.
The result’s a hood (in the event you’re invoking Little Pink, there needs to be a hood) decked out in just about a whole bunch of 1000’s of Swarovski crystals, which then transforms right into a cape gown that he described as showing in fixed movement because it hits the sunshine. The hood has some sorcery inside it too—after coming to the concept that the hood ought to float round Roth’s head, he enlisted milliner Stephen Jones to create an understructure that provides the piece a lifetime of its personal. One other factor that advanced over the course of the design course of is a crystal rope, initially envisioned by de Saint Sernin as a necklace, that wraps round Roth’s hand and drapes to the ground, flowing with him as walks.
These markers of magic and transformation tie again to what makes Into the Woods so particular for Roth, and the legions of others who like it. “ exhibits itself in so many alternative lights as I transfer, and that, for me, can also be a metaphor of the present,” Roth, who was styled by Michael Philouze, Alban Roger and Tom Kivell, says, “as a result of it’s a present that meets you at no matter level you might be in your life, in your path. It’s a present that I’ve returned to time and again and once more in my life as a toddler, as a younger grownup, as an grownup, in many alternative phases of life.”
“The present doesn’t change. You alter, and also you hear one thing that you simply by no means heard earlier than. You connect with a personality that you simply didn’t know a manner into earlier than,” he continues. “And on some stage, I feel this look actually, for me, visualizes that. The methods by which the crystal cape gown is in fixed movement and motion, exhibiting itself in numerous methods, relying on the way you see it.”
Change isn’t simply confined to that Tonys ensemble. The occasion has a brand new location this 12 months, shifting from Midtown to the historic United Palace in Washington Heights, which suggests all of Roth’s preshow prep will even occur uptown at a close-by lodge to keep away from the unpredictability of New York Metropolis site visitors. “Normally, we begin hair and pores and skin prep on the similar time—typically, hair takes longer, however typically not,” Roth, who labored with hair stylist Brent Lawler, make-up artist Sil Bruinsma, and nail artist Sonya Meesh, notes. “Then, we’ll begin the dressing course of. There’s at all times a catch, and we hope it’s not a literal one on this one as a result of all these crystals can catch on stuff.” (That’s additionally a part of what Friday’s run-through will assist guarantee.)
The ceremony itself will even really feel completely different than years previous, as a result of writers strike. An settlement between the WGA and the Tonys committee is permitting the present to go on, however with out using scripted materials. The compromise was undoubtedly a aid for theater makers, because the Tony Awards broadcast serves as an essential advertising instrument for Broadway—particularly whereas the trade continues to be dealing with financial headwinds within the wake of the pandemic. Regardless of these challenges, Roth stays optimistic concerning the future.
“I feel a lot of what all of us realized is that rebuilding is an ongoing course of, that we are going to proceed to try to be the group all of us wish to be—the artwork kind all of us wish to be, the way in which of working all of us wish to expertise, and the connection with one another and our audiences that we wish to be a part of,” Roth says. “So, I proceed to be actually excited and impressed by the trail we’ve all been taking collectively since reopening, and the trail forward.”
And regardless of the end result for Into the Woods on Sunday, this Tony Awards can be a particular one for Roth and his husband, Richie Jackson, who met on the Tonys 20 years in the past. Taking an anniversary image, and holding Jackson’s hand on the present, are two issues he’s most trying ahead to from the night time. “We’ve got an ongoing dialogue about this, as a result of he likes to rely our anniversary as June 8, which was the date of the Tonys 20 years in the past after we met,” Roth shares, “And I at all times say it’s each time the Tony Awards are.” Now, although, he’s determined it’s truly each. Extra to have a good time—it’s the sort of factor any of us would need for.