Neal Rubin

'Wicked' green: Makeup artist transforms Elphaba the witch

You can use an airbrush, but then you have to clean up, and that's too big a project eight times a week. So Joe Dulude turns Donna Vivino green the old-fashioned way -- with a paintbrush.

It's 45 minutes before curtain at the Detroit Opera House, and her eyes are closed as he dabs a color called Landscape Green across her brow. He could probably close his eyes, too, as often as he's done this, but instead he's studying every quick stroke.

It's the little details, he'll tell you, that help bring a witch to life.

Vivino co-stars as Elphaba in "Wicked," playing through Jan. 4 to near-capacity houses. In the truly lyrical re-telling of "The Wizard of Oz," Glinda the Good Witch remains blond. Elphaba, who turns out to be the better witch, is green on every visible surface.

As comfortable as the character is in her emerald skin, it colors every part of her world. And as natural as Vivino makes it seem, it's hard not to ask the musical question, "How the heck do they do that?"

Other logical questions follow along, like "How long does it take to get that gunk off?" and "Does the understudy have to get painted, too?"

Not as long as you might think, Vivino says, and no. But if you want to see frenzy, check out the scene when a standby has to step in midway through the show.

It's easy being green

Vivino first played Broadway as Young Cosette in "Les Miserables." She was 8 years old, and already a veteran of a Jell-O Pudding Pops commercial with Bill Cosby.

At 30, she has fair skin, dark blond hair and permanently green fingernails. There's one bottle of polish at her extended-stay hotel in a western suburb and another in her dressing room, where she's sitting in front of a long mirror in her size 7 lace-up Elphaba boots, stockings, an emerald green body suit and a plain white robe.

When Dulude finishes daubing her neck, he doesn't have to ask; she drops the robe to expose the tops of her shoulders.

"I tried a bunch of different things," says Dulude, 37, a slender, vividly tattooed former graphic artist with tufted orange hair. He's the makeup designer for all the worldwide productions of "Wicked," and he is a serious student of greening.

Eventually he came back to the product he started with, a body paint from MAC. It comes off on the things she clutches tightly, like her broom, but she can shake your hand without leaving a residue.

He uses a 2-inch-wide brush, then covers the green with a waterproof powder to help fix the makeup and make it more sweat-proof. Her eyelids get a green shadow, applied with a watercolor brush, and her eyebrows wear a shade called Extreme Black.

A little purple on the cheek and eye for contour, a loose pigment powder in Golden Olive for glow, olive green eyebrow pencil self-applied by Vivino to her lips, pincurls and a black pony-tailed wig from a woman named Lisa Thomas who's honestly known as the head of hair, and Elphaba is ready to be herself. From the first brush-stroke to the point where Thomas takes over and Dulude wipes his hands, it's 15 minutes and 19 seconds.

The Landscape Green is "really flattering," Vivino says, in all seriousness. "Everyone looks great in it."

A shower takes the paint off

The record for woman-to-witch transformation is seven minutes. That came with another cast the night an ailing Elphaba staggered through another number or two while a pair of painters and two hair techs transformed the understudy.

For marathon greenness, the record probably goes to the actress who had the role the night the power went out at the theater in Chicago. "She had to go home that way," Vivino says. "I wonder what people thought on the El."

You can't feel the paint once it dries, she says, and sometimes she forgets she's wearing it. But that first time she saw herself, brown eyes blinking against a background of green, was memorable.

"Awesome," she says, and helpful, too. She's in character from the time she leaves the chair. There's a touch-up at intermission, a bit of shading to make her older and more commanding, and then there's a second act and an ovation ... and then there's a shower.

The color sluices off with soap and water, but it takes time. Vivino likes to cool down her voice then, too, and she confesses that she spends perhaps an undue number of minutes in the backstage stall.

"Not very green of me," she says, and a rueful smile cuts across an emerald face. Magic can only take you so far.

Reach Neal Rubin at (313) 222-1874 or nrubin@detnews.com.