Francesca and I saw *Gypsy* on Broadway on Jan 3, 2025.
Any new production of *Gypsy* is mounted for the woman playing Madame Rose and this revival has Audra McDonald in the part. CBS Sunday Morning had a segment on the show - - a theatre expert said that Madame Rose is the King Lear for women in musical theatre. McDonald said that it's the Mount Everest of roles - - "Everest is there for a reason, people want to climb it, right? It's there because it's majestic and incredible and people like, 'I want to figure out if I can get up there,' and that's what I'm trying to do."
Let me tell you - - she climbed that highest peak and she did it with force, drive, and guts. She's won a record six Tony awards, only Angela Lansbury comes close, with five. Francesca and I both feel like no one can knock her out this year, she's a shoo-in for beating her own record for a seventh Tony. She was astonishing.
*Gypsy* is about the ultimate stage mother. She pushes her two daughters onto the vaudeville stage and when the fabulously talented younger daughter flies the coop she sets her sights on her comparatively untalented older daughter. That girl eventually grows up and becomes the first lady of the burlesque stage, Gypsy Rose Lee. The show is based on the memoir of Lee but the creators of the show saw the mother, Rose, as the most fascinating character. It was written for the great Ethel Merman, the last role created for her. Her shadow looms large over the show 65 years later.
This is the third time I've seen the show on Broadway: first with Bernadette Peters in a production directed by Sam Mendes, then with Patti Lupone directed by Arthur Laurents, and now McDonald directed by George C. Wolfe. Each woman had not just her own take on the character but her own particular way of singing it. Peters doesn't have a particularly big voice and at that stage in her career her voice was a little patchy and raspy - - but she made that work for the character, it made her more human, more exasperated. I wasn't as taken with Lupone but no one could deny her rightness for the role. She's The Human Steamroller, her talents lined up very well with the requirements of Madame Rose. But she lacked any hint of vulnerability.
McDonald brought a more powerful sense of determination to the role than the other two, with a deeply wounded center. Plus her singing has more of an operatic flavor - - it was a thrill to hear those songs sung by what we call a "legit" voice. She didn't shy away from her vibrato. Also her transitions from speaking to singing seemed to be more seamless than maybe I'd ever experienced before from any other performer. She has an uncanny ability to make a song seem integrated into the drama, rather than a separate event. She's done this in every show I've seen her in.
I wish director George C. Wolfe did more work on Broadway, he is a brilliant director. I loved that he made this production so theatrical. That might seem like an absurd word to use for a stage production, which is inherently theatrical - - it is, after all, happening a theater. But Wolfe used painted drops and other old timey effects to point out the artificiality of the production. The most stunning moment of the show was when the three Hollywood Blondes first arrive at the burlesque house: he had a drop lowered from the flies with a door in it. The girls got to the door and did their dialogue about what a thrill it was to be playing in a real theater. The drop went up, the door stayed onstage and then did a 180 so the girls were now backstage at the burlesque house. It was like Dorothy opening the door to her house and walking into Oz - - but instead of the dreamworld of Oz it was a run-down, flea-bitten, second-rate burlesque house. It took my breath away.
Speaking of breaths being taken away, Francesca and I were amazed to hear so much gasping from the audience. We heard a big gasp when Rose turned her sights on Louise before launching into "Everything's Coming Up Roses." And another gasp when Rose volunteered Louise to do the strip number. These are crucial moments in the plot in a show that's been done and redone constantly since Eisenhower was President. It was sort of touching that this was new material to so many people.
A few other things I need to mention: Danny Burstein played Rose's boyfriend Herbie. He's a wonderful actor but for some reason he didn't have the impact that I've seen by other actors in the role. Maybe I saw him on an off night.
Jordan Tyson played the grown up version of June - - her singing really grated on my nerves, her voice sounded tight and shrill. Francesca said this: "I thought they made louise shrill on purpose- it felt like a choice. like it wasn't that she was so talented, it was that the mother needed her to be talented." That makes sense, let's go with that.
Joy Woods played Louise. She did a creditable job but the apex of her role was a bit of a misfire. It's a four-part sequence of strip numbers, taking her from her first appearance in Wichita all the way to the American capital of burlesque, Minsky's. She becomes more secure, more confident, more full realized with each change of venue. This sequence was jaw-dropping in the two previous productions - - it was a thrill to see the actor playing Louise go from being an awkward, terrified teenage girl to being the undisputed queen of the bizniss. I think the timing was a little off in this production, or maybe Woods didn't articulate the progression to clearly, but it didn't really come across the way it should.
The show more or less ends with what Merman called an "aria," Rose's total emotional meltdown, "Rose's Turn." McDonald was searing, scorching, she set the joint on fire. It's the culmination of a whole evening of build-up and McDonald was out of this world. I don't imagine I'll ever see a better performance of that number or the role.
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