NEW YORK — When he was first asked to helm the Broadway hit musical “Death Becomes Her,” director and choreographer Christopher Gattelli loved it, but refused to work on the big, splashy opening number. It was just too delicious.
“When they sent it to me, I was cooking and I burnt dinner because my mind was spinning,” he says. “I was, like, ‘This is a gift. I will never get an opening number like this again.’”
So Gattelli worked out everything else about how to put Robert Zemeckis’ 1992 comic cult classic onto a stage and only then turned to the big, brassy song, “For the Gaze,” a winking valentine to gay men, punning along the way.
“I was able to do the show and then have my full brain on that number because I knew the potential of what it could be,” he says.
What Gattelli crafted is an opening number for the ages, led by Megan Hilty: There are mid-song costume changes, dance breaks, chorus boys hoisting Hilty, spangly jumpsuits and tuxedos, high-kicking Vegas showgirls with feather headdresses, a body double doing somersaults, a rainbow flag of top-hatted dancers, and Hilty doing a Liza Minnelli cameo, all ending with the grand finale of Hilty as Judy Garland’s Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz,” complete with a little stuffed dog.
“I heard the pocket in that song, and I was like, ‘I know there’s a giant laugh there. I can hear giant laughs, what’s that giant laugh?’” says Gattelli. “What’s the biggest gay reference? Then I literally I just worked backwards.”
That number telegraphs to the audience exactly what to expect for the rest of the night — a perfectly rehearsed, lushly costumed, silly, self-aware comedy.
“Once we hit ‘For the Gaze,’ the audience knows exactly what the show is,” he says. “And then I think they’re in for the ride.”
The work on “For the Gaze” has helped Gattelli see his show earn 10 Tony Award nominations, including one for his Broadway debut as a director and another for his choreography.
The musical is based on the film, which starred Meryl Streep as a self-centered actor and Goldie Hawn as her suffering-in-the-shadows writer friend. Their mutual desperate measures for achieving eternal youth turn comically grotesque. Hilty plays the Streep role, while Jennifer Simard plays the Hawn one.
“It felt like just the perfect fit for what I do and what I love to do,” Gattelli says. “I love comedy and I love to direct comedy and I love to do these big splashy numbers. It felt like everything I’ve been itching to do.”
Gattelli — who was a dancer in the original “Cats” — has been a mainstay on Broadway of late, able to choreograph such venerable works as “The King and I” and “My Fair Lady” but also irreverent musicals as “SpongeBob SquarePants” and the jukebox variety, like “The Cher Show.”
He made his directing debut off-Broadway in 2011 with “Silence!” a parody musical of “The Silence of the Lambs,” complete with a chorus of dancing lambs running across the stage.
Lowe Cunningham, lead producer of “Death Becomes Her,” saw it in Los Angeles and later asked Gattelli about the experience, how he collaborated and his approach to the work. She was impressed by his openness to all ideas and his caring.
“I think first and foremost, his talent is clear and it’s been out there in the world of choreography for a long time. He is innovative, he does things other people aren’t doing, but the other thing is that he’s renowned as being an incredibly kind human being,” she says.
Gattelli, who won a 2012 Tony for choreographing “Newsies the Musical” — one of his show-stopping moments was dancers sliding on newspapers — was brought in relatively late to “Death Becomes Her,” only a year and half before opening on Broadway.
“It was a great lesson in trusting your instincts,” he says. “They said, ‘We want a lush, opulent, sexy, magical sparkling evening.’ And we just started taking big swings.”
It started with — of all things — the curtain. The audience filing into the theater is greeted by a purple, royal fabric. “When people walk in, they immediately feel like that it’s lush and sexy and mysterious.”
The musical is filled with very funny special effects that are decidedly low-tech. At one point, the two leading ladies are replaced by two men duking it out in dresses and wigs. The audience roars at the deception and Gattelli even advised one of the male combatants not to shave his arm hair.
“The audience is in on the joke,” he says. “I love that they go on that ride with us. They’re laughing with us. We’re all laughing together and it feels good.”
One scene from the movie needed a lot of planning to make it on stage: The tumble down the elegant mansion stairs by Hilty’s character. Hollywood CGI magic would have to be replicated by Broadway ingenuity.
“The people that know the movie and the fans especially are going to go, ‘How are they going to do it?’ It was keeping me up at night forever because we tried everything,” says Gattelli.
The creative team — which also included set designer Derek McLane, lighting designer Justin Townsend and sound designer Peter Hylenski — decided to make it a dance punctuated by sound effects.
Warren Yang — an actor with a gymnastics background — wears Hilty’s outfit and a wig as he tumbles slowly, acrobatically and theatrically down the stairs, somersaulting as thunder sounds crash and we hear what seems like bones cracking. (The stairs were made of the rubber Neoprene for safety.)
“There are very simple techniques that make a big impact,” says Gattelli. “I just went back to it’s a beautiful, lush, gorgeous show, but, at the core, it’s just theatrical magic and stagecraft.”
