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Anticipation is everything. On the way into the lobby, tickets in
hand, one woman said breathlessly to another, “I can’t believe we’re
here. At last.” Two gay boys were so giddy they couldn’t keep
their hands off each other. There was a buzz throughout the
theatre. It was a Wednesday night in late September—and even though
Gypsy had been running for six months at the sumptuous
St. James Theatre, there was the feeling of an opening night. The
excitement was palpable—and cut across all demographics, from the
newbies, all of twenty and twenty-one, to the seasoned theatre
queens, to the coiffed and silvered couples in their golden years.
And then the overture started as one curtain, two curtains, three
curtains lifted and parted to reveal the orchestra onstage. Oh,
that glorious overture! It swept through the audience, leaving
heads bobbing and dipping, fingers dancing on shoulders. The show,
that music! Who doesn’t have some reference point for those songs,
those characters? And that overture bringing it all back again, a
musical memory montage—before the show has even started, before
Madame Rose has shouted out her unforgettable opening line, “Sing
out, Louise.”
Of course it’s Madame Rose’s show—rather than Gypsy’s—and as
everyone from Broadway to
Timbuktu now knows, this time it’s Patti Lupone’s triumph. There
have been others who’ve inhabited Madame Rose on Broadway before,
from Ethel Merman to Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, and Bernadette
Peters—but it’s likely that Lupone will long remain the Rose that
people best remember. With her trumpeting voice and a hellbent
snarl on her lips that can just as easily curl into a leer, Lupone
bulldozes her way through the memory of any previous incarnations of
Madame Rose. She’s demanding and determined, to insure that notice
is paid, and she utilizes every ounce of her being to cajole, to
browbeat, to coerce you into submission. She will have her way; she
will make you see that Rose knows best and that no one knows Rose
better than she.
What a ferocious performance! Such ferocity of character! It’s
small wonder that so much stage time for the other characters
involves standing alongside Rose, or at a distance, open-mouthed,
gaping, or simply responding—to her. She’s Medea and Lady Macbeth,
without the blood on her hands. And yet, as Lupone plays her near
the final curtain, she’s also touchingly vulnerable. There’s a
catch in her voice when she confesses her desire to be noticed; and
she sobs uncontrollably during a moment of catharsis, when suddenly
her life choices flash before her eyes.
But as much as it’s Rose’s show (and therefore, Lupone’s), what
grips a viewer is the seamlessness of the show’s construction: how
smoothly the tale is told, not only of a stage mother and her two
daughters, but how well Gypsy reveals American history as
lived during the Depression, highlighting aspects of the American
character: the ruthless ambition, the burning desire for success,
and the yearning for family and home. There’s nothing saccharine
about this version of Gypsy—no
Hollywood
happy-ever-after—and the final sally from Louise, from daughter to
mother, is a bitter, lingering laugh.
As the writer of the musical’s book, Arthur Laurents has been with
Gypsy since its inception in 1959, and it’s a testament to
his tenacious direction that this version of Gypsy is both
timely and timeless. Long will we be haunted—and thrilled—by this
brilliant production.
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