Word: coco
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Hepburn has been immersed in Coco for a year-primarily to have an answer ready for the can-she-sing question. Basically, she is a contralto with a range of an octave and three notes. For the past eight months she has been studying voice in various places-rattling the walls in Manhattan, London, Hollywood and Connecticut. So totally has Hepburn plunged into this production that when the first rehearsal was called on Sept. 29, she swept onstage knowing all her lines...
...play taking shape at the Mark Hellinger Theater, Kate plays the Coco of 1953-the Chanel who, at age 70 and after 15 years in retirement, decided to make a comeback by reopening her salon. The plot is as simple as a Chanel suit: Yes, she'll open; No, she won't; Yes, she'll open; No, she won't; Yes, she'll open; Yes, she opens. Her collection is a flop with the Paris fashion world, but not (aha!) with the fresh-eyed buyers from across the Atlantic. Paris may have hated the dresses...
There are a few adornments to the story. Through a series of flashbacks using filmed sequences shown on mirrored screens, Coco's past love affairs are recalled. She develops a motherly feeling for one of her young mannequins and becomes one of the angles in a rather flimsy triangle involving herself, the mannequin and the girl's lover. The Lerner script makes a stab at smart-set language, but at heart Coco is an old-fashioned musical. It stands or falls on its star and its music...
...with two sets, Beaton ended up designing 253 Chanel-style costumes for the show (total costume cost: $150,000) including 11 that will be dismantled during the performance, as Coco rips them apart and starts all over again. The musical's finale is a fashion show that features Chanel designs spanning 1918 to 1959. "It's like a Busby Berkeley number," says a member of the troupe. "The whole set is transformed into mirrors, platforms and rings going in different directions. Everything is turning and flashing at once...
Beyond the Lerners and Previns and Beatons-even beyond the real Chanel -it still remains very much Hepburn's show. Of Coco's 2½ hours, she is onstage all but twelve minutes. Although a mellower Hepburn than the imperious Kate of earlier days, she is still tough. "I think I'm feisty!" she agrees, "but people have just gotten used to me. Now that I've become like the Statue of Liberty or something. Now that I've come to an age where they think I might disappear-they're fond...