It’s a tale as old as time, or at least as old as theatre history. In the run of a live show, actors will spill coffee on their shirt, break their heel, or rip their dress. Sometimes minutes before an important scene.
Or during it. Tea time: Beauty and the Beast head of wardrobe Darryl Myott and his deputy Sue Bell with actor Jayde Westaby in a dressing room at Her Majesty’s Theatre. Credit: Justin McManus Actors on the musical Beauty and the Beast need not fear because wardrobe masters Darryl Myott and Sue Bell will be there with needle and thread to save the day.
The pair oversee a crack costume team labouring furiously backstage to make magic, as they term it, happen on stage in the colourful Disney-produced show, which is based on the popular animated film. Beauty and the Beast ’s second ever Melbourne season (the first was in the mid-1990s), opens at Her Majesty’s Theatre on Saturday night, starring Shubshri Kandiah as Belle and Brendan Xavier as the Beast. The season, which is expected to run for more than six months, follows successful runs in Sydney and Brisbane.
Myott and Bell have worked together, on and off, for 30 years on productions around the world, including Phantom of the Opera , The Lion King and Frozen . “We know each other inside out,” says Bell, adding that they’re “like an old married couple”, complete with occasional bickering. In Beauty and the Beast , their team of 16 people clean and maintain 300 costumes for more than 30 actors, bu.
