Gypsy

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Mama Rose in the musical Gypsy, the 1959 collaboration of Arthur Laurents (book), Jule Styne (music) and Stephen Sondheim (lyrics), has become the Hamlet or King Lear for female stars. Audra McDonald who is currently the First Lady of the American musical theater may not have been the first name you think of for this role (she is, in fact, the first Black actress to play the part on Broadway following Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Bernadette Peters and Patti LuPone) but she turns in her finest performance, making her not only a tragic heroine as in Death of a Salesman but also a woman spiraling down to a nervous breakdown like Blanche du Bois in A Streetcar Named Desire. In a role she was obviously born to play, McDonald devours the stage and everything standing in the way of making her daughters stars of the vaudeville circuit.

Director George C. Wolfe who has worked with McDonald previously in the 2016 Shuffle Along has made several revisions to the original casting: along with McDonald, Rose’s entire family is Black including her father, like the recent London transfer of Marianne Elliott and Miranda Cromwell’s production of Death of a Salesman. The child newsboys who back up her daughters June and Louise in their vaudeville act are initially played by three Black actors, but as teenagers they are replaced by three older white actors. This suggests that Rose wants to join white culture rather than bucking it. Later when her troupe has become the all-female “Toreadorables,” they are made up of three white teenage girls and three of color. Wolfe has jettisoned Jerome Robbons’ original choreography for all fine new dances by Camille A. Brown. All of these changes work like a charm, Wolfe having successfully planned out all of his moves.

As the ultimate stage mother, Rose Hovick, famously fictionalized from her daughter Gypsy Rose Lee’s 1957 memoir, McDonald pulls out all the stops. She runs the gamut of emotions from A to Z: she cajoles, seduces, berates, blackmails, begs, charms, dares, scolds, pushes, wheedles, persuades, scolds, reviles, fascinates and mesmerizes. From Rose’s first scorching song, “Some People” sung to her father, to her final number, the show-stopping “Rose’s Turn,” McDonald’s dramatic soprano and tremendous range make each song a little one act play, something lyricist Sondheim was to perfect elsewhere in his later scores. Her dancing of the new choreography by Brown is impressive, but it is when she combines her acting and singing talents that she blows us away.

Starting in Seattle, Rose Hovick attempts to get her daughters Baby June and Baby Louise into vaudeville by pressuring child talent show producers to put them on the bill. At one she meets a former agent Herbie who now is a theatrical candy salesman and he agrees to become their manager. Although Rose promises to marry Herbie when they achieve the Orpheum Circuit, she reneges on her promise. When avid June is offered a place at a performing arts school and a chance to solo as a dramatic actress, Rose rejects this offer to June’s dismay. Tulsa, one of the boys from the troupe, tells Louise that he is working on his own act, and soon after June and he have eloped to go out on their own. Rose decides that she will star Louise in their old act, but all of the boys quit to find other work. In the closing moments of Act I, optimistic Rose announces in the show-stopping number “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” and imagines a bright future.

It is now the end of the vaudeville era and “Madame Rose’s Toreadorables,” an all-girl act, a pale imitation of the one for June, is having trouble finding bookings. Reaching rock bottom, the act is booked into a burlesque house in Wichita, Kansas, as a way of avoiding police raids. Rose wants to cancel but Louise reminders her that they need the two weeks’ salary. When Rose proposes to Herbie, he demands she break up the act and let Louise have a normal life. She agrees to marry him on the day the show closes. Three of the strippers on the bill counsel Louise on what it takes to be a successful stripper.

As the Toreadorables are preparing to pack up after their two week engagement, the star stripper is arrested, and Rose volunteers the reluctant Louise to take her place for the money for the top spot on the bill. Herbie is disgusted by Rose’s pimping out her own daughter and walks out on her. Louise goes on following her mother’s advice to “Make’em beg for more, and then don’t give it to them.” Using “Let Me Entertain You” from their earlier act, Louise makes a hit and rises to be a star in burlesque. Louise now known as “Gypsy Rose Lee” tells her mother she wants her to stay out of her professional life, and Rose goes on stage and sings her solo “Rose’s Turn” demanding to know when it will be her chance to be a star. As we watch her get angrier and angrier, letting out her pent up emotions, in McDonald’s hands Rose has a nervous breakdown center stage, right before our eyes. Not only is this the climax of the show, but in McDonald’s rendition, it is the capstone of her career so far and leads reputedly to a nightly rapturous standing ovation.

Both McDonald’s performance and Wolfe’s direction are frenetic and played at a breakneck speed which has its advantages and disadvantages: while the audience can never take its eyes off the stage or McDonald for a moment, the show is exhausting and McDonald looks wiped out at the end. In fact after the ultimate scene between Rose and Gypsy, the audience is almost too tired to applaud at the final curtain. Wolfe has staged the vaudeville troupe’s “Let Me Entertain You” number (which goes though several permutations as the children get older) as convincingly second or third rate. Both Baby Junes (alternating Marley Lianne Gomes and Jade Smith) as a child and Jordan Tyson as a teenage headliner are so shrill and raucous that the number becomes increasingly harder to watch.

On the other hand, the star turn, “You Gotta Have a Gimmick,” performed by specialty strippers Tessie Tura (Lesli Margherita), Mazeppa (Lili Thomas) and Electra (Mylinda Hull) still dazzles with Margherita stealing every scene that she is in. Musical comedy veteran Danny Burstein (Tony Award for Moulin Rouge! The Musical) is excellent as the weak-willed Herbie who lets Rose walk all over him. While Kevin Csolak as chorus boy Tulsa is fine, his dancing doesn’t hold a candle to Tony Yazbeck’s hoofing in the 2008 production which starred Patti LuPone and Laura Benanti.

Let us not forget Joy Woods (Middle Allie in The Notebook) as Louise who grows up to be Gypsy Rose Lee. Not only does she hold her own opposite the titanic McDonald, we watch as she grows up before our eyes from the untalented Baby Louise to the star of Minsky’s Theatre, the top burlesque house in the business. In fact, in their final scenes together, Gypsy Rose Lee is the first person to make Rose listen and behave herself. In her series of burlesque numbers using “Let Me Entertain You” Woods becomes more and more forceful until she achieves her goal of wowing the audience.

To remind us that these characters have no money and eventually live through the Depression, Toni-Leslie James’ costumes are suitably frumpy and cheap-looking, enhanced by the hair and wig design of Mia Neal. Santo Loquasto’s sets are redolent of the vaudeville era as though each scene is from a vaudeville act itself. The moody lighting is by theater legends Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer. Andy Einhorn conducts the 24-person orchestra in the original Sid Ramin and Robert Ginzler orchestrations. At the performance under review, the sound design by Scott Lehrer sounded tinny in the beginning but settled down to a reliable tone soon after, although this may have been intentional for Uncle Jocko’s Kiddie Show.

Given the meatiest role of her storied career, Audra McDonald as Rose devours the stage while creating a monstrous but sympathetic character you will not forget. While she has usually played congenial and warm-hearted characters, McDonald proves she has the acting chops to play a disagreeable and cold-blooded stage mother. This is a particular treat in that she also probably has the best singing voice of all the actresses who have played this role in the past. Under George C. Wolfe’s direction, Audra McDonald bats her Gypsy out of the ball park. If you care about the history of the American musical you cannot afford to miss this performance which is destined to be talked about for decades to come.

Gypsy (open run)

Majestic Theatre, 247 W. 44^th Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, call Telecharge at 212-239-6200 or visit http://www.Gypsybway.com

Running time: two hours and 55 minutes including one intermission