While the life of Roy Halston Frowick wasn’t exactly a Horatio Alger story, it’s definitely a tale of rising to the top from humble beginnings. Halston, as he eventually became known, scaled the ladders of fashion to become one of the most famous designers in the world. His success granted him high social status as well. He became a regular at Studio 54 and had close friendships with Liza Minnelli, Elizabeth Taylor, and Andy Warhol, among other superstars. Sadly, neither fame nor fortune stopped the spread of an AIDS-related cancer that ended Halston’s life in 1990 at the age of 57.
While Halston’s life has been told in a variety of mediums, his story has come to the stage at Sag Harbor’s Bay Street Theater in Raffaele Picciti’s solo play Mister Halston, directed by Michael Wilson and starring Matt McGrath as the legendary designer.
Intriguingly, the more salacious aspects of Halston’s life did not particularly interest the show’s main producer Bruce Robert Harris: “I wanted to produce this play because I wanted to tell this important story about an iconic figure in the design world who changed women’s fashions forever and his influence on the way we dress and today’s designers, as well as how his fashion empire was ultimately destroyed,” he says.
While McGrath never actually met Halston, the actor, who began his Broadway career at age 8 in the 1978 musical Working, knew about him as both a designer and a social personality from his adolescence.
“I started going out to clubs in New York City at age 15, and finding myself in rooms with people like Debbie Harry, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, and maybe even Halston, but I never met him,” recalls McGrath. “In addition, from a young age, I loved reading fashion magazines and I was always fascinated with the clothes. Of course, I had to admire them from afar. I wasn’t buying sixteen-hundred-dollar ensembles in those days.”
McGrath, who came onto the project in recent months, had less time than he might have liked to research the role, but he’s found plenty of outside resources. “First and foremost, Raffaele is a font of knowledge,” he says. “He has friends who knew Halston and everyone has plenty of anecdotes. Of course, I read Steven Gaines’s seminal biography, Simply Halston. I watched some CNN documentaries about him, and I watched the documentary, UltraSuede: In Search of Halston. It’s all been very informative.”
Among the things McGrath learned is that Halston ultimately lost the right to use his own name on his own designs through a series of unforeseen corporate deals. The play contains numerous scenes where Halston is frantically talking to his unseen lawyer about making a deal with Revlon to reclaim it, which ultimately fails.
“It’s a cautionary tale about the dangers of not protecting your work, which is true of artists of all types,” he says. “You can never be sure how things will go awry. But at the end of the day, he taught so many people, like jewelry designer Elsa Perretti, how to transform from being artist to becoming a successful businessperson. I think the moral of the story is, no matter what, talent and hard work always win out.”
McGrath also readily admits that for all the role’s challenges, it also fits into his theatrical wheelhouse, which has included such larger-than-life roles as Hedwig, the Emcee in Cabaret, and Harold in The Boys in the Band.
“While I am generally more soft-spoken and unassuming in real life, I love a role that’s a heavy lift because it makes you stronger as an actor,” he says. “I feel you do what feeds you as an artist, and roles like this allow you to say a lot in every sense of the word. I am honored to have been given this opportunity.”
