Legendary Hollywood costume designer Orry-Kelly lives again (at his own funeral, no less) in Nick Hardcastle’s entertaining, informative Orry, now playing a limited engagement at West Hollywood’s Lee Strasberg Theatre.

It’s at the three-time Oscar winner’s 1964 memorial that Orry steps out of his coffin to recount the tale of a boy’s journey from the small Australian coastal town of Kiama, New South Wales, to a career designing gowns and costumes for nearly three-hundred films, many of them made during his eleven years as head of Warner Brothers’ costume department.

Before those three Oscar wins (and who knows how many more if the Best Costume Design category had been around in the pre-1948 years during which he designed gowns for a whopping 270 films), Orry-Kelly (born Orry George Kelly) left his life as the disappointing son of a macho athlete dad to become a Sydney vaudevillian with a taste for Black Velvets, champagne, and male genitalia (euphemistically dubbed “fish and chips”).

New York City then beckoned and the young Aussie quickly found himself rooming at the Coolidge Hotel alongside future greats Jack Benny, George Burns, and Gracie Allen, to name just a few.

Hardcastle recounts Orry’s early years painting stage sets, speakeasies, and title art for silent films, designing patterned shawls and hand-painted neckties, and taking in as roommate/lover an impossibly handsome young Englishman named Archie Leach. (“What can I say?” quips Orry. “He makes excellent Fish and Chips!”)

Broadway then beckoned the on-the-rise designer-from-down-under, that is until the Stock Market crashed and Orry headed off to Hollywood where his ex-roomie, still handsome but newly “heterosexual,” was already on his way to international superstardom, though not with a name like that. (If you don’t know who exactly Archie Leach was to become, I’ll leave it to Orry to reveal that tantalizing tidbit.)

Though “fish and chips” were no longer an option where the now “straight” Archie was concerned, the on-the-rise actor did at least agree to have his agent take Orry’s designs to Warner Brothers and Orry-Kelly (as he soon became known) began designing for stars like Bette Davis, whose name he affectionately shortens to “Bet,” while figuring out ways to “accentuate, flatter, celebrate, or disguise” the figures of Jean Harlow, Ava Gardner, Zsa Zsa and Eva Gabor, and his least favorite actress to dress, Marilyn Monroe.

Basing his play-with-songs on Orry-Kelly’s posthumously published memoir Women I’ve Undressed, Hardcastle delivers a dynamic, charismatic star turn under Wayne Harrison’s astute direction, and if his Orry is frustratingly mum on what life was like as an unapologetically gay man in Golden Era Hollywood (we do at least learn that Orry-Kelly refused to enter a sham marriage like his former lover’s multiple failed attempts at heterosexual bliss), what he does reveal about his rise to Tinseltown success (and descent into alcoholism) fills ninety thoroughly enjoyable minutes.

Delightful featured player Danielle Heaton not only gets to impersonate such luminaries as Fannie Brice and Mae West but harmonize with Hardcastle, assist with props, and offer moral support when needed.

Musical director Anthony Zediker tickles the ivories to perfection, whether providing musical underscoring or backing Hardcastle and/or Heaton on such song classics as “From This Moment On,” “My Blue Heaven,” “Hooray For Hollywood.”

 Jared A. Sayeg lights John Iacovelli’s black-and-white funeral home set with panache, Kate Bergh costumes the cast with elegance and flair, and Cricket S. Myers provides her accustomed expert sound design, with Fritz Daviz’s projection design taking us back on a journey through Orry’s life in black-and-white and earning bonus points for Jack Warner’s cleverly dubbed eulogy.

Orry is presented by Gentleman Gentleman George Productions in association with HP Source. Michelle Bonet–Horton, Bob and Margie Pritchard, Jacki Weaver Ao, and Alan Wethern are associate producers.

Harrison is dramaturg. Trevor Reece is stage manager and Javier Balderas is assistant stage manager. Devon Lee is digital media designer. Lynn McQuown is assistant costume designer. Karen Ways is production coordinator. Jackie Diamond is casting director.

Orry-Kelly might have faded into obscurity were it not for Australian film director Gillian Armstrong’s 2015 documentary Women He’s Undressed and the publication of the designer’s hitherto undiscovered memoir that same year, and Orry now gives the Hollywood costume design superstar further deserved recognition.

Somewhere up in Hollywood heaven, Orry-Kelly is raising his glass to salute Nick Hardcastle’s captivating, elucidating Orry down here on earth.

Lee Strasberg Theatre, 7936 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood.
www.Gentleman-George.com

–Steven Stanley
November 2, 2019
Publicity shot: Tony Duran

Tags: Lee Strasberg Theatre, Los Angeles Theater Review, Nick Hardcastle, Orry-Kelly