| . | 04/13/2008
GYPSY
By: Jeannie Lieberman
LuPone as Rose, photo by Joan Marcus
Every once in a while you leave the theater totally satisfied. So it is and will always be with Gypsy, described by aficionados as “the perfect musical”. We are delightfully reminded why this 1959 show is timeless.
It starts with perhaps the most famous four notes in Musical theater: composer Jule Styne’s instantly recognizable brassy beloved overture and, moments later, the clarion call of what is also theater’s most spectacular entrance “Sing Out Louise” as Mama Rose storms in from the back of the house and down the aisle to a stage full of auditioning juveniles to insure her daughter “Baby” June’s career.
Writer Arthur Laurents later confided that the entrance was not created so much to introduce Ethel Merman, the original Rose in a this star making vehicle, but to establish Rose’s character as “a gorgon, an action that would establish how she favored Baby June at Louise’s expense, to show how she worked by bulldozing anyone who got in her way...once she was there I sat back and let her take over the show”
It started out based on the popular autobiography of ecdysiast Gypsy Rose Lee (who insisted that the show be called “Gypsy”) but playwright Laurents rebelled finding the more compelling figure to be that mother of all stage mother’s, Rose, a frustrated wannabe performer who used her kids to fulfill her own dreams and, in happy compliance, composer Jule Styne and young lyricist Steve Sondheim open and close the show with songs about her. And La LuPone starts like a racehorse out of the gate with “Some People” in which she states her ferocious, defiant mission to fight for her independence and scratch out a career for her daughters, and maintains that pace in her gut wrenching finale “Rose’s Turn” in which she realizes that accomplishing her daughter Louise’s success still leaves her out of the spotlight. “When is it my turn?........This time for me…for me…for ME!”
In between these musical bookends is a story of such breadth and dramatic arc that, when the juveniles who surround “Baby June” come out for their curtain call, it seems like they were from another show, ages ago instead of its opening number. In one of theater’s cleverest gimmicks, the kids continue their routine under strobe lights and morph into teens starring the now rebellious “Dainty June” still singing their signature song “Let Me Entertain You” – the very same song that will later launch the grown up, sophisticated Louise on her incredible career as a stripper, er, ecdysiast. (“Make ‘em beg for more and then don’t give it to them” counseled Mama Rose, advice that the real Gypsy took to heart throughout her career).
A willing accomplice is Herbie (charmingly played by the versatile Boyd Gaines), whom she coaxed into being their agent, coyly seducing him with “Small World”. Louise’s poignant birthday song, “Little Lamb…I wonder how old I am”” was almost scrapped when the original director/choreographer Jerome Robbins wanted to insert a big vaudeville, circus dance number. When Styne threatened to quit and withdraw his entire score the dancers were paid off and the song stayed. “Have an Eggrole, Mr. Goldstone” is a lesson in negotiating a booking, Rose style.
“You’ll Never Get Away from Me”, a song Styne pulled from his trunk named “I’m In Pursuit of Happiness”, establishes the relationship and even sexuality between Rose & Herbie, who is continually thwarted in his offer to Rose what was anathema to her, a stable home and family life. Louise and June, tired of struggling in the ever diminishing vaudeville circuit, also wish for a different life in “If Momma Were Married”.
June does find the escape she dreams of when she runs off with Tulsa (the excellent Tony Yazbeck) who demonstrates to the smitten Louise the dance routine he has prepared for them, “All I Need Now is the Girl”, a charming vignette in itself and one of musical theater’s most complete and compelling numbers.
Undeterred, Rose pushes on, swapping her “newsboys” for all girl “Toreadorables” who also run off, providing the cue for the show’s most down to earth, happy numbers as Rose, Herbie and Louise bond in “Together”, showing the human, playful side of Rose till, by accident they are booked into a burlesque house.
Lenora Nemetz as Mazeppa photo by Joan Marcus
This provides the opportunity for the oft performed, hilariously satiric showstopper, “You Gotta Get A Gimmick” featuring three run down strippers giving Louise advice: the bugle blowing Mazeppa (Lenore Nemitz), graceful butterfly Tessie Tura (Alison Frasier) and the barely mobile Electra (Marilyn Caskey). What a number! What a score!
In another magnificent moment of staging we see Rose push Louise from backstage through the curtain for her first number as the scared, reluctant Gypsy Rose Lee (so named by one of the strippers and the announcer who forgot to say “Louise”) and, in a flash, the perspective is changed and we see her onstage as the audience does, Mama Rose calling instructions from the wings “walk…dip….”.
Laura Benanti as Gypsy photo by Joan Marcus
As Gypsy Rose Lee surpasses her mother’s dreams and enters a sophisticated world beyond her ken Rose is ultimately shut out by the infamous note “the mother of Miss Gypsy Rose Lee is not allowed backstage” which Laurents took from the time Richard Rodgers barred him from the set of Do I Hear A Waltz? It is this ultimate rejection that leads into her now immortal closing showstopper.
The true hero of the new production is its old director Arthur Laurents who, at 90, has had plenty of time to distill his vision of the characters he created teased, and polished it till it gleams with a new depth and intensity. Human volcano Patti LuPone, who has also had time since the Encores! production to soften a bit (hence a curls in lieu of the blunt cut wig) in her interpretation of “a larger than life, mythic mesmerizing monster of a mother sweetly named Rose” (as Laurents described her), still barks and growls her way through her most revelatory numbers, only slowing down in the duets and trios and unashamedly feasts on the scenery in “Rose's Turn”. But the crowd loves her and one can almost see the Tony in her hand. Sweet voiced Laura Benanti is still more convincing as a tomboy than a stage siren.
The music, that orchestral trampoline that never lets you stay earthbound for long, is played by a 25 piece on-stage orchestra that periodically comes into view to the delight of the crowd (and the musicians) and Sid Ramin’s & Robert Ginzler’s brassy arrangements are expertly conducted by Patrick Vaccariello. Not as inspiring are James Youmans’ budget size sets and Martin Pakledinaz’s thrift shop costumes (c’mon guys, Patti needs a little help) nicely bathed in Howell Binkley’s light design.
The show is ultimately about the need for recognition: Rose needed it in lights, Louise needed it from her mother, parents who live through their children’s lives, children who grow up to be their parents, a need everyone has in one way for another. But for now that recognition is that this Gypsy is better than ever and should be comin’ up roses for a long time!
St. James Theater, 245 West 44 St, 212 239 6200
|
|