In my mind’s eye, I can picture Jess Goldstein as a young designer in the costume shop at the Williamstown Theatre Festival circa summer 1980. I was the publicity director at this summer festival in Massachusetts, and he was fitting clothes on such actors as Christopher Reeve, Blythe Danner, Edward Herrmann, and Richard Chamberlain, pins in his mouth, tape measure around his neck.
When Goldstein was announced as the winner of the 2015 TDF Irene Sharaff Lifetime Achievement Award For Costume Design, I had to blink a second or two. Had 35 years really gone by, since we were both at Williamstown? In chatting with the designer, we retraced some of the steps along his illustrious career path over the past three decades.
“I was born in New York City and grew up in New Jersey,” Goldstein recalls. “I started seeing Broadway shows as a kid, all those wonderful musicals in the ‘60s.” Whistling his favorite tunes, he headed off to be an art major at Boston University. “I was good at drawing and thought about going into commercial art. Then I met some students majoring in theatre design and liked the idea that you could study that in college. It gave it legitimacy and seemed like a more viable career. I really found myself.”
Goldstein spent many summers at theatre festivals as he developed his design skills, from an apprentice in Ogunquit, Maine, to assistant designer at the Berkshire Theatre Festival. “I also worked in some costume shops in New York and felt I had enough experience by then for graduate school and went to the Yale School of Drama. I was very comfortable doing costume design and made great professional connections at Yale. It was a perfect fit.”
In his first year out of Yale, in the fall of 1978, Goldstein was recommended by set designer and Yale colleague David Gropman to design the original New York production of Buried Child. “That was my first New York credit at Theatre For A New City,” he notes. “The show was well reviewed, won the Pulitzer and some Obies, and moved to a commercial production at the Lortel, then the Theatre de Lys, on Christopher Street—my first hit!”
Also doing a lot of regional theatre at the time, Goldstein designed the Charles Strouse musical, Charlie And Algernon, for The Folger Theatre Group in Washington, DC in 1979. It was performed at The Terrace, the smallest theatre at the Kennedy Center. The good reviews for this show eventually carried it to the Helen Hayes Theatre in New York, and Goldstein had his first Broadway credit by September 1980.
Also in 1979 in Washington, he designed another original musical, Tintypes, at the Arena Stage. This also moved to New York, first to the theatre at St. Peter’s Church at CitiCorp Center, then to the John Golden Theatre on Broadway that October. “So by 1980, just two years after Yale, I had two Broadway shows,” notes Goldstein, who still does a mix of Broadway and regional theatre. “I have gotten away without being too typed and design a lot of new, as well as classical, plays, a healthy mix of period and contemporary.”
In 1979, Goldstein did his first summer in Williamstown, then run by Nikos Psacharopoulos, and as the designer recalls, “Nikos took a shining to me, and I was young enough and crazy enough to often take on three of their main stage productions each season and do them in two weeks each, with big stars. I learned so much, how to prioritize and how to get the job done with not too much money and a staff of mostly kids. I worked there throughout the 1980s, but after Nikos passed away, I chose to not work there and wanted to take more time for myself in the summers.”
Through The Years
Over the past 10 years, one of the productions that Goldstein is most proud of is Henry IV at Lincoln Center Theater. “It was very favorably reviewed and a truly remarkable production,” he notes. “I had the opportunity to really show off with the costumes, create a fresh, sexy take on the period, and got my first Tony nomination for it.”
Of all his Broadway projects, Jersey Boys, which opened in 2005 and is still running on Broadway and around the world, has to be the most successful and a perfect case of serendipity. “In 2002, Classic Stage Company did Monster, Neal Bell’s take on the Frankenstein story, directed by Michael Grief,” notes Goldstein. “At a tech rehearsal, set designer Robert Brill asked me if I wanted to meet director Des McAnuff and design Tartuffe with them at the La Jolla Playhouse, which I happily did. A year later, Des asked me to do Jersey Boys at La Jolla. It was really a case of being in the right place at the right time, so the show at CSC led to my doing Jersey Boys. You really never know where your next important gig is coming from.”
A Tony Award-winner for Lincoln Center Theater’s The Rivals in 2005, Goldstein’s current Broadway musical, On The Town, which opened in the fall of 2014, takes the designer back to the big Broadway musicals he liked as a kid. “It’s a fabulous revival of a big old-fashioned musical, and I used colors from my crayon box I never had the chance to use before,” he states. “It’s been the most rewarding design experience of my career, so far.”
Sliding easily from period to period, Goldstein’s philosophy is that “a good costume designer does the right research no matter what the project is,” whether it’s Take Me Out’s contemporary baseball players, to the NYC turn-of-the-century street kids of Newsies, to Shakespeare’s Merchant Of Venice, for which he received another Tony nomination. “Of course, when you design a show with characters that people may know—Jersey Boy’s Four Seasons—or new plays with contemporary clothes, the audience is a little more aware of what you are getting right,” Goldstein notes.
He also loves designing Shakespeare “because his plays are so complex. Choosing a period of his plays and creating their world is like cracking a mystery. I love designing musicals. What could be more fun? But most of all, I love working with smart directors, amazing craftspeople, and good budgets. Often it’s more about the collaboration with people I like working with than the project itself,” says Goldstein, who took a slight detour into film design at one point in his career.
His first two movies were “based on plays I had done and were directed by the directors who had done the plays,” he explains. “The first was The Substance Of Fire by Jon Robin Baitz, directed by Dan Sullivan with art direction by John Lee Beatty, who had also designed the play, and the second was Love! Valour! Compassion! by Terrence McNally, directed by Joe Mantello. Then Tony Goldwyn, whom I knew at Williamstown when he was a young actor and was also in the film of The Substance Of Fire, asked me to design his directorial debut, A Walk On The Moon, starring Diane Lane, Viggo Mortensen, and Liev Schreiber.”
But theatre remains the designer’s first love. “The challenge for me, and what I love about theatre, is that it really is a collaborative art,” says Goldstein. “I love working with actors, and for me, it is the most interesting part of the process. I inevitably spend a lot of time alone in my studio sketching a show. Sadly, there are fewer meetings with the director and other designers than one might assume, so the fittings with the actors are highly informative. When an actor puts the costume on for the first time in the fitting room, and all the adjustments and refinements are made to make it work for them, that is very satisfying for me. The highest compliment is when the actor says, ‘Ah, now I know who my character is.’”
A Lifetime Of Achievement
With a modern show, Goldstein likes to meet with the actors before doing any shopping. “I try to get all of us involved in a conversation and talk through who the characters is, where the character might shop for his clothes, if he buys clothes, or perhaps his wife buys them. It’s really more about talking about the character than the costumes. At the first fitting, you may only discover what the costume is not, but hopefully, by the second fitting, you’ve nailed it,” he explains.
Goldstein says that, in many ways, period shows are easier. “There is often more trust from actors and less personal opinion, but I will still look for photos of the actors,” he says. “It’s so helpful to see who will be wearing my designs, and I’m very empathetic to the fact that the actor must wear the costume and believe in the truth of it. Unlike modern clothes, the silhouette of a period costume often shapes the actors, and they might be wearing wigs so hair color doesn’t matter so much,” he notes. “And period-appropriate undergarments, shoes, and other accessories aid in creating the total picture.”
Shopping for fabrics is a task that Goldstein loves to do. “I still like to get out and shop,” he admits. “I get ideas I might not have thought of by doing some of the swatching myself. There are far fewer fabric stores than when I started, but it’s all out there if you know where to look. I love working with many of the costume shops in New York, and they are incredibly creative. Two shops I never used before, Tricorne and EuroCo, did some of the most interesting costumes for On The Town. The way they interpreted my sketches was fabulous—wonderful drapers and tailors and milliners who go for the essence of the sketch, capture the style, and not interpret it too literally. The sketch has to engage the viewer, communicate what I want the costume to express, and a good shop can look at it and run with it.”
Goldstein is about to begin rehearsals for Ever After, the new musical at Paper Mill Playhouse, directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall. “It’s an incredibly inventive and beautiful version of the Cinderella story set in medieval France and based on the popular Drew Barrymore film,” he notes. Other upcoming projects include Two Women, a new Italian opera for San Francisco Opera directed by Francesca Zambello, based on the famous Sophia Loren film and set in the last days of WWII, as well as two Broadway projects for next season: The Honeymooners musical, directed by On The Town’s John Rando, and David Mamet’s play, China Doll, directed by Pam MacKinnon, which marks the designer’s third production starring Al Pacino.
Also on the drawing board is In Your Arms, with 10 scenarios for dance, written by 10 renowned playwrights and created by Christopher Gattelli, set to open at The Old Globe in September and hopefully move to Broadway. “I’m so excited to collaborate with Chris again,” says Goldstein. “The dances are all very romantic and set in many different periods and countries, some quite real and some quite fantastical.”
Being a teacher at Yale is something else Goldstein enjoys, as witnessed by the fact that he has been teaching the MFA candidates since 1990. “This is my 25th year there, and I love it,” he says. “I go to New Haven once a week. Jane Greenwood and I travel up to New Haven on the train together every Wednesday. Jane was my teacher when I was a grad student at Yale, and it’s a true privilege to teach alongside her. What excites me about teaching is that I learn so much from my students; they keep me fresh and challenge me, keep me on my toes. Their points of view are often very different from mine. I sometimes assign them projects I’ve designed and am often very surprised and enlightened by their ideas.”
The 2015 TDF/Irene Sharaff Awards will be presented on Friday, May 1, at the Hudson Theatre in New York City. Additional winners include scenic designer Doug Schmidt for the Robert L.B. Tobin Award for Sustained Excellence In Theatrical Design, costume designer Brian Hemesath for the TDF/Irene Sharaff Young Master Award, and custom shoe designer Gino Bifulco of T.O. Dey Shoes for the TDF/Irene Sharaff Artisan Award.
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