'Death Becomes Her' brings Meryl Streep movie to Broadway with 'groundbreaking' illusions

Severed noggins, staircase tumbles and gaping stomach wounds.

With all the onstage magic happening in “Death Becomes Her,” it’s enough to make your head spin. Adapted from the 1992 camp classic starring Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn, the lavish new Broadway musical serves up irreverent comedy with dumbfounding feats of theatrical sorcery.

The show tells the story of caustic best frenemies Madeline (Megan Hilty) and Helen (Jennifer Simard), who ingest a purple potion from a mysterious socialite (Michelle Williams) that gives them eternal youth. But the transformative elixir has unsavory side effects: Even the slightest knock to their va-va-voom figures causes irreparable blemishes. So when the gloves come off and the ladies brawl, all manner of absurd body horror ensues.

The movie won an Oscar for its outrageous visual effects. So naturally, illusionist Tim Clothier was daunted when he got the call about helping bring “Death Becomes Her” to the New York stage (taking the mantle from Rob Lake, who oversaw the effects for the show’s Chicago tryout early last year).

“I knew the movie and thought, ‘Gosh, there’s going to be some very tricky bits to work out,’” says Clothier, whose past credits include Cirque du Soleil and Blue Man Group. “It’s not a spectacle in Vegas where the magic takes center stage – here, the magic needs to drive the story. So we really had to pull from our box of tricks. From a historical perspective, there are references to classic things that magicians would normally do, as well as some groundbreaking things we developed that no one’s really tried before.”

Ranked: Broadway's 10 best shows of 2024, including 'Oh, Mary!'

How 'Death Becomes Her' pulls off that jaw-dropping staircase scene

The show’s action centerpiece, if you will, is the Act 1 finale. In a heated confrontation with Helen and Ernest (Christopher Sieber), the schlubby object of both their affections, Madeline is pushed down a mansion staircase, crunching her bones and mangling her limbs all the way down.

The slow-motion plunge is one of the movie’s most iconic images, and director/choreographer Christopher Gattelli (“Newsies”) racked his brain for months about how to bring that to life onstage.

“We literally tried everything: puppets, throwing dolls downstairs, exercise balls with wigs on them. We thought maybe we could build a robot,” Gattelli recalls with a laugh. “Nothing felt right.”

But he eventually cracked the code when he met actor/dancer Warren Yang, an Olympic-trained gymnast who now serves as the production’s acrobatics captain.

“I was on Instagram and I saw a video of Warren literally changing his clothes while he was doing a handstand,” Gattelli says. “I was like, ‘Wait a minute.’ I reached out to him and was like, ‘I can see a world where there’s a pommel horse routine down a flight of stairs.’ And he was like, ‘Oh, I’m all in – let’s play.’”

Gattelli calls the sequence a “true collaborative effort,” working with lighting designer Justin Townsend (“Moulin Rouge! The Musical”) and costume designer Paul Tazewell (“Wicked”) to cleverly achieve the illusion that it's actually Hilty and not Yang toppling down the stairs. He also had to find other dancers with that particular skillset, should Yang ever need to call out of a performance.

“It’s an epic moment that everyone is waiting for and I was just thrilled where it landed,” Gattelli says. “Warren stops the show every night with it. There are no wires – he’s literally doing these handstands and cartwheels and flips. It’s a total free fall and I just cannot believe he can do that.”

The show's neck-twisting illusions are 'old-fashioned theatrical magic'

From there, the musical's optical illusions only get wilder: Madeline gets her head knocked off during a shovel-wielding showdown, with the help of stunt doubles and props including an eye-tricking serving cart. She also blows a hole through Helen’s stomach with a shotgun. Of course, unlike the movie, audiences cannot see directly through Simard’s torso, which instead billows smoke throughout Act 2.

“I can’t share the secrets because then I would have to kill you,” Clothier says slyly. “But there were many different iterations of that throughout development.” The moment, too, when an arrow flies through Helen’s belly is based on a “classic magic effect from the 1890s. We had to find visual ways to tell the story of someone who's had a hole blown through their stomach, and that was one of those.”

The image of Madeline’s head doing a full 360 is also “just good old-fashioned theatrical magic,” Gattelli adds. “If you really look at it, it’s not hard to tell how it happens. But if the audience is on the ride, it’s OK if you see a little bit of how the sausage is made. It’s happening live right in front of you, and it’s satisfying that the audience eats it up the way they do.”

Gattelli is quick to note that it takes “dozens of people” to pull off these illusions eight shows a week. An hour before each performance, various cast and crew members are behind the curtain running through each and every stunt to ensure they’re safe.

“No one takes anything for granted,” Gattelli says. “It really frees everyone up, so when they do the show, they can feel confident and breathe and be funny. It helps them let loose and give those amazing performances – and that’s always the goal.”

“Death Becomes Her” is now playing at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre (205 W 46th St.).

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Death Becomes Her' musical has 'epic' illusions on stage. Here's how.