Lillias White Finds Her Goddess for 'Hadestown’
The veteran actress Lillias White, 71, will perform the role of Missus Hermes in "Hadestown" eight times per week beginning Sept. 13. Sabrina Santiago for The New York Times.
The Tony Award-winning actress will step into the role of the musical's narrator, now known as Missus Hermes.
"I can't do anything today!" Lillias White said as she emerged, somewhat flustered, from the elevator outside the Tricorne costume shop on the sixth floor of a Midtown Manhattan office building on a recent Tuesday morning. Her face was hidden behind white sunglasses and a navy and green star-patterned mask.
"All you have to do is stand, Michael Krass, the costume designer for the Broadway musical "Hadestown," reassured her. White, 71, was here for her second costume fitting as the next narrator of "Hadestown," a role she will perform eight times per week beginning on Tuesday. A veteran stage actress who won a Tony Award in 1997 for playing a middle-aged prostitute in the Cy Coleman musical "The Life," she will become the first woman to play the Hermes character, now called Missus Hermes.
"I'm looking forward to doing what I do vocally," she said. "And I'll probably get some notes about reining it in, but" — she grinned — "I want to give the people what they came for."
Krass and Katherine Marshall, the owner of Tricorne, ushered her down the hallway, past racks of costumes for the Broadway musical "Wicked" and the HBO series "The Gilded Age," to a fitting room lined with a semicircle of mirrors.
The first order of business was the shoes: White, who is onstage nearly the entire two-and-a-half-hour show, had put in a specific request for her boot heels. They should be no higher than two inches, so her feet wouldn't hurt.
"I got a pedicure last night," she told Krass, flashing hot pink toenails peeking out from sparkly white wedge sandals, as Pam Brick, a draper, and Siena Zoe Allen, the show's associate costume designer, arrived to assist. Then it was time for the big reveal: The suit. Krass stepped out into the hall so she could change.
