Music important to Rainbow Stage's latest, but '80s-era rock hair had to be just so

Winnipeg Free Press

3 days ago

Rainbow Stage's head of hair and wigs didn't have to mull it over too deeply to find inspiration for the outrageous hair-dos and don'ts in Rock of Ages.
Rock of Ages
Rainbow Stage
• Opens Thursday, runs to July 12
• Tickets $29-$78 at rainbowstage.ca
• Recommended for age 15 and up
'I dated half of these guys in high school,' says Laura Warren, who graduated from Oak Park in the late '80s at the height of glam rock. She points to ensemble member Devin Alexander, decked out in a sky-high, shoulder-length mullet and skin-tight black-and-white leggings.
'My biggest high school crush looked almost exactly like that, so I modelled it after him. Mike, if you're reading this, thank you,' she says.
Since 2022, the purple-blond stylist has been dubbed the 'wig wizard' at Rainbow Stage, joining the creative team ahead of that year's run of The Wizard of Oz as a last-minute hair transplant.
'They were panicking because the person they hired took a film job a few weeks before opening night and it became the dream job I didn't know was possible,' says Warren, who's also on hair and wig duty for the Manitoba Opera. (At her day job, she cuts, colours and styles for clients at Pembina Hair Co.)
The Oz gig brought Warren back to Rainbow Stage, which she first attended in 1979 for the company's production of The King and I with her parents. Her mom didn't want to go, but her dad said the actor playing the king looked just like Yul Brynner, the bald-headed star his wife had a crush on.
If Warren didn't feel quite at home in the court of Siam, that's not the case at the Bourbon Room, the grimy establishment where the cast of dreamy characters gathers in Rock of Ages, the long-running Broadway jukebox musical portraying the love story between a small-town girl and a city boy against the backdrop of Hollywood's Sunset Strip.
BROOK JONES / FREE PRESS
Wig wizard Laura Warren took inspiration from a high school crush.
BROOK JONES / FREE PRESS
Wig wizard Laura Warren took inspiration from a high school crush.
Set and prop designer Ksenia Broda-Milian's smoky vision of the Bourbon Room took Warren back to her teenage days of sneaking into Winnipeg venues such as Bumpers, Strawberries and Scandals.
'At Scandals, they barely glanced at IDs,' she remembers.
Before she was old enough to vote, drink or buy cigarettes, Warren was growing out of the awkward phase when her mother still got her dolled up for picture day.
'I had stick-straight hair and my mom would put these spongy rollers in, but they'd fall out overnight and only half would curl. I was notorious for sticking my head in water fountains to straighten it back out,' says Warren, who graduated from Red River College's barbering program at 21.
While hair plays a major supporting role in Rock of Ages — which was made into the 2012 film of the same name, starring Tom Cruise and Mary J. Blige — Warren says she only had to procure six wigs, a dozen fewer than for last year's run of Mary Poppins.
BROOK JONES / FREE PRESS
Among those gathering in the Bourbon Room, the grimy setting for Rock of Ages, are Nathaniel Muir (centre left) and Jeff Rivet (centre right).
BROOK JONES / FREE PRESS
Among those gathering in the Bourbon Room, the grimy setting for Rock of Ages, are Nathaniel Muir (centre left) and Jeff Rivet (centre right).
It helped that some of the show's leading male performers — including lead Nathaniel Muir (Drew), Vinnie Alberto (Joey Primo) and Jeff Rivet — came prepared with glorious locks of their own, she says.
'I grew this moustache myself — it took only a month and a half — but the hair I've been growing since (2023's) Little Mermaid,' says the ruddy Rivet, who plays Lonny, the show's energetic narrator.
Lonny marks the largest role at Rainbow for Rivet, who made his debut for the company in 2019's production of Cinderella, choreographed by Rock of Ages director Alexandra Herzog, who also directed last year's Poppins.
Born in 1988 and raised in Stony Plain, Alta., Rivet doesn't remember the decade as clearly as Warren, but the actor has a deep connection to the bands featured in the musical — including Foreigner, Whitesnake, Poison, Extreme and Night Ranger — thanks to his older sister.
'When I was one year old, I ruined her Def Leppard cassette by pulling out the tape. She'll never let me forget it,' he says.
BROOK JONES/FREE PRESS
Lonny marks the largest role at Rainbow Stage for Jeff Rivet.
Lonny marks the largest role at Rainbow Stage for Jeff Rivet.
To get the show's six-piece band into the spirit, Warren carefully selected wigs to make sure they wouldn't look out of place in the Bourbon Room. Music director Paul Rodermond's commitment went a bit further: the lifelong brunette let Warren give his head a shock of electric blond.
'It's changed my lifestyle, my outlook, my personality. I'm still surprised when I look in mirrors, but it's given me a new lease on life and I've accessed parts of myself I didn't know were there,' he says.
'I feel like a different energy is radiating from me than previously. After the show ends, I have plans to transition to frosted tips before returning to my natural state.'
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Ben WaldmanReporter
Ben Waldman is a National Newspaper Award-nominated reporter on the Arts & Life desk at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Ben completed three internships with the Free Press while earning his degree at Ryerson University's (now Toronto Metropolitan University's) School of Journalism before joining the newsroom full-time in 2019. Read more about Ben.
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