TORONTO -- Between the sequined skivvies and thigh-high stiletto boots, there's a lot that can go wrong costume-wise on the stage of "Kinky Boots," which is now running at Toronto's Royal Alexandra Theatre.
And yet the cast members have fared well, says associate director D.B. Bonds.
Well, there was that one time in New York, when Tony Award-winning star Billy Porter's heel broke just before the number "Sex is in the Heel."
"The musical director was vamping and luckily our understudy wore the exact same size that Billy did," said Bonds.
"So our wardrobe supervisor ran downstairs, got the heels, handed them to him, he took them from the wing, put a new pair on and then we started the number.
"Of course, the audience loved it because they saw something no one else has ever seen."
From heels to hems and open zippers, wardrobe malfunctions happen to even the biggest stars of the stage.
Angela Lansbury said she's had heel issues while flitting about in a long dress as an eccentric medium in the comedy play "Blithe Spirit."
"I often catch my hem in my heel when I'm flying around the set ... bringing forth the spirits, encouraging the spirits to come in and so on," the former "Murder She Wrote" star said when the show was in Toronto in February.
"I can sometimes cause absolute havoc with my hems in my heel."
Her co-star, Jemima Rooper, said the long, flowing nightgown she had to wear as a ghost in the show was "a whole farce in itself."
"In London I used to get stuck on all the furniture around the room."
In one show, she tripped on her gown as soon as she walked onstage during a scene in which the other characters weren't supposed to see her spectre figure.
"They all started laughing," she said. "It's been a whole challenge in itself and it's a whole separate play."
Another night the gown snagged on a door.
"I had to take it off and then hide in curtains because I got naked," said Rooper.
Canadian tenor Ben Heppner said he had a "glorious" costume calamity during a "really intense" scene with his female co-star in "Peter Grimes" in Paris.
"We were sitting on the hood of a Volkswagen Golf, right at the lip of the stage where the orchestra is," he recalled during an interview for the recently finished run of "Titanic" in Toronto.
"And she touches me and I just react violently and say, 'Take away your hand, the argument is finished, friendship lost' -- and I looked down and my white shirt was sticking out of my fly very prominently."
Then there was the time he went onstage in what was his professional debut with a makeup bib sticking out from underneath his costume.
"People onstage saw me and started laughing, even though they had to say their lines. When I got offstage, the makeup artist was there saying, 'Can I have my bib back please?"'
