TORONTO - "Come From Away" wardrobe supervisor Melissa Joy Crawford was getting ready for another performance of the hit Canadian musical on Broadway Sunday when the house manager came to her requesting safety pins.
It seemed a theatre patron had ripped his pants and needed a quick fix. Instead, Crawford had the man with the trouser trouble go downstairs to see her.
But when she went to the show's box of "retired pants," she couldn't find his size, and made a fast-thinking request "in a very appropriate way."
"I'm like, 'Drop your pants,' and he's like, 'Oh, OK," Crawford recalled with a laugh in a telephone interview from the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre.
"So he drops his pants and I hand them back to our stitcher, Estella Marie Simmons, and she puts it on the sewing machine."
The pants panic was resolved in a matter of minutes, right before the start of the show. It was an easy fix, as the rip was right down the seam.
