Theatre

Vingie Miele
wig mistress, ‘Chicago’
‘It’s a mystery, how I got in with wigs. I was a Saturday girl in a hair salon and I hated it, but then I got a job as a secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture and I hated that even more. So it was desperation, I suppose.

‘Most women in a West End musical will wear a wig, because you wouldn’t want to have your real hair set every night, it would damage it too badly. And you don’t really want to go around all day looking like Roxy or Mama Morton. It’s a bit much, in Sainsbury’s. Feature continues

‘On a matinée day, I’ll get in around 12, do whichever wigs are on the rota to be washed, and set them in rollers; they’re mounted on wig blocks, which are made of cork and canvas, so you can stick these big pins into them to secure the rollers. It can feel a bit like voodoo, if you’re in a bad mood. Then we wet them down and put them in the wig oven, which is also very handy for heating up your dinner. By the time you’ve got your last wig in the oven, the first ones (and your baked potato) will be ready. Me and my assistant Rachel will dress them one by one. That takes about two hours as well. I do that every day there’s a show. That’s the easy part; about an hour before the shows the actors start coming in and then it’s absolute chaos.

‘When I started out, I honestly thought it wouldn’t matter what your personality was like, so long as you were good with the wigs, but it does. Because you’re dealing with actors about to go on a stage, you’ve got to make them feel secure that you know what you’re doing. They can smell your fear. After 20-odd years in the business I’ve now started doing a counselling and psychotherapy course because I realised that it’s about 50 per cent of what I do every night.

‘A wig mistress’ worst nightmare is the wig coming off on stage. Years ago I was doing “Annie Get Your Gun” with Suzi Quatro, and there was this one moment where she swooned into an actor’s arms. One night, her wig got caught on his buttons, and as he pushed her back up it came off. I died a death in the wings. He chased her round the stage, trying to get the wig back on her. I had no idea whether she was going to wipe the floor with me, but she thought it was hysterical. So did the audience. One woman in the stalls was eight and a half months pregnant, and she laughed so hard, she went into labour. That baby’ll be 20 now. I’d like to meet them. I feel partly responsible.’