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Designer Cecil Beaton has drawn up only two basic sets: Chanel's salon and her ornate, book-filled apartment above the salon. But they are mechanical marvels that split, spin, break apart and generally transform themselves from the identifiable into the abstract, depending upon the mood of the scene.
If he got by 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 of me." At her insistence, the theater is kept at a bone-chilling 60° for rehearsals. Last week, noticing that almost everyone in the cast was sniffling, she arrived one morning with a box of sweaters. Dumping them in her dressing room, she announced that they were for anyone who was cold.
She is just as tough on herself. She told Lerner that her singing was the saddest thing she'd ever heard. "So I've worked," she says. "When you run the risk of making an ass of yourself, you want a fifty-fifty chance.''