You enter the Majestic Theatre to see GYPSY and expect to be overwhelmed by one artist who has received six Tonys.
But you’ll come out with admiration for two people who have done just that.
Yes, Audra McDonald has a half-dozen, but her director George C. Wolfe owns a six-pack, too. True, one of Wolfe’s was not an outright win; it was “only” bestowed by the nominating committee.
But it was a Lifetime Achievement Award, which is no small achievement.
Of Wolfe’s other five, “only” two were for direction. This production may very well get him his third. Hell, considering what he’s brought to the Arthur Laurents-Jule Styne-Stephen Sondheim masterpiece, give him a MacArthur Genius Grant.
Before attending, take a look at your various videos of GYPSY – legal and il – to better appreciate his every brainchild. It’s as if Wolfe heeded what Rose says near the end of Act One: “The old act was getting stale and tired.” Indeed, GYPSY’s four previous Broadway revivals have been pretty much photocopies of the original. Is that why none ever became a white-hot ticket, and each had only a respectable but not overly impressive run?
Wolfe isn’t afraid to do things his way, down to replacing original director-choreographer Jerome Robbins’ famous strobe-light scene where the young performers “turn” into older ones. He’s been that daring. But if God is indeed in the details, as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe insisted, we have a theatrical god here.
Let’s first go to the scene where Rose and her father do battle. Laurents’ stage direction states that the man is “holding the Bible that he is eternally reading.”
Videos prove that some fathers have carried nothing, others have toted a nondescript book, and one even sat with a pulp novel in his hands. Here, Papa is seen reading a tome with gold-leaf pages, which lets us know it’s a Bible. That visually reinforces how antithetical his values are to Rose’s.
Wolfe’s biggest change, of course, is that his Rose is Black. No, it’s not non-traditional, color-blind casting. She’s Black.
Some will protest, “But these are real people, and they weren’t Black!” Yes, but GYPSY’s subtitle is “a musical fable,” isn’t it?
Going Black gives the story new resonance. In the days of vaudeville, few African-American entertainers were represented by lofty white agents; they got jobs through the Theatre Owners Booking Association, or TOBA, which its employees (read: victims) nicknamed Tough on Black Asses.
So, Rose, never one to be abused if she could help it, can be seen as a pioneer in doing her damnedest to avoid TOBA. She’s a forerunner to DREAMGIRLS’ Curtis Taylor, Jr., who was determined to pave the road to integrate the white avenues of show business.
Wolfe brings in a new plot twist, too, by having Rose originally hire Black kids as June’s backups before eventually replacing them with white lads. June is now such a light-skinned Black that Rose may be hoping that her favored daughter can pass for white. That Louise is much darker could be yet another reason why Rose shunts her not only to the background but into a cow suit, too.
It gets worse for this daughter who’s been finishing a distant second. When the act needs males, Rose blithely says, “Louise can be a boy.” Wolfe smartly doesn’t just make her that, but a man with a heavy black beard: Abraham Lincoln.
That comes during the “Stars and Stripes Forever” sequence of “Dainty June and Her Farmboys,” where Wolfe provides yet another innovation. Rose has many of her boys dressed as familiar presidents, in producing a veritable precursor to Mount Rushmore.
We ache more for Louise when the vaudeville theater offers an enormous sign that proclaims BABY JUNE above the title. How diminished Louise must feel for getting no mention at all.
Wolfe shows more brilliance with “Mr. Goldstone.” This celebration of an amenable vaudeville booker is no longer Rose’s solo. Wolfe instead smartly divides it among the boys, with each one trying to outdo the other in auditioning for Goldstone in hopes he’ll take him away from all this (and Rose). It’s every-man-for-himself desperation, and soon into the song, June joins in and lobbies for herself, too.
Next Wolfe has Jordan Tyson (fresh from THE NOTEBOOK) overdo – purposely – June’s audition for mogul T.T. Grantizer. She’s so ashamed of what she must perform and humiliated at how she must be coming across that she knowingly plays it as parody. Her only hope is that Grantziger will see it that way. Mocking it is the lesser of two entertainment evils and the only way June will get through this act without losing her mind.
One of Louise’s birthday presents is a lamb. Most directors obtain a genuine animal; Wolfe uses a stuffed one. Is this a cost-cutting move? Possibly, but perhaps Louise was not given the real thing. Thus, the lonely girl sings to it in the way kids do with plush toys or imaginary friends. Is there no one else in whom she can confide?
There will soon be two. The first is June, for Wolfe improves the scene in which the girls muse how their lives would be better “If Momma Was Married.” Wolfe gets us to see that this is the first time they’ve dared to let out their true feelings and trust each other’s less-than-loving ones toward their mother. Here’s where they truly become sisters, with Louise as unaware as we of the future devastation that June has been planning.
That’s where Tulsa comes in. He’s developing an act on the sly: “All I need now is the girl,” he sings, and Louise dares to dream that she can be his choice.
Wolfe shows how Tulsa regards Louise through a small gesture. After she says she’ll help him with his costume, he knocks his elbow against her arm. She’d prefer a kiss, but that’s what boyfriends give girlfriends; arm-bumps are what friends give friends.
Another Wolfe innovation occurs after June gets an offer from Grantizger on the condition that her mother not be involved. Rose offers proof that she’s already made June a star: “Who’s got clippings like she has? Look at ‘em! Books full of them!”
In previous productions, Rose has always meant “Go out and find them! You’ll see I’m telling the truth!” Wolfe has them right on the premises, and there’s Louise, holding the scrapbook. What must the lass feel, lugging around tacit evidence of her sister’s greatness in reviews where she’s seldom if at all mentioned?
Time to laud our over-the-title star whose first name is all that’s needed on the marquee. Notice that up till now, GYPSY’s window cards have seen surnames for Ethel, Angela, Tyne, Bernadette and Patti.
Now, “Audra: GYPSY” is all that’s needed.
McDonald impresses almost immediately. The way she says “Catch up, honey!” is more like a concerned mom than a stage mother. When she tells her father “I KNOW I can work it,” we see that she really believes in herself – at least at that moment. However, months later, when Herbie enters with Mr. Goldstone, McDonald’s shocked expression suggests that way down deep Rose had started to doubt that such good fortune could ever come her way. For a long second, she doesn’t know how to handle it, and when she finally rallies, McDonald roots the song in nervousness.
Rose usually has been all business, even where Herbie is concerned. Here instead McDonald has great charm seducing him in “Small World,” which is expected, but her “I’m a woman with children” also conveys that she knows that motherhood brings with it a great number of responsibilities.
The real surprise comes in “You’ll Never Get Away from Me.” Wolfe has McDonald act far more romantically approach than previous Roses have managed. Her final “So, you’re gonna not at all get away from me” is part command but part plea, too.
McDonald also makes us hear Styne’s music in a new way, for she uses her golden soprano early and often. But in “Everything’s Coming up Roses,” McDonald brilliantly displays both definitions of the word mad – at first angry, and then mentally unbalanced. She grabs Louise and clutches her to her breast so hard that the kid must struggle to breathe. It’s another smart way that Wolfe shows that Rose is thinking first and foremost about herself.
In “Together, Wherever We Go,” Wolfe avoids the familiar staging when Rose and Herbie turn right, Louise goes left, and both adults turn and sing “No, this way, Louise.” Instead, he has McDonald face fourth wall when delivering the line; she doesn’t even see Louise behind her making the mistake, but she knows her daughter well enough by now to know the kid is going in the wrong direction.
One performer gets applause that rivals McDonald’s and deserves every handclap: Jade Smith as Baby June. She’s so hilarious, thanks to choreographer Camille A. Brown giving her every clichéd show-biz gesture imaginable.
Joy Woods’ Louise grows extraordinary in the second act where we see the seeds of Louise’s revolt that are part teen rebellion, too. She calibrates beautifully as her career progresses. She and McDonald play off each other beautifully in the scene where the daughter tells her mother that they must take this job in burlesque because nothing else is on the horizon. Wolfe makes sure that there’s a l-o-n-g pause in which Rose desperately tries to think of something, anything that will be a convincing rebuttal. Only after that lengthy silence does she capitulate, which is what die-hard Rose would do.
Of the 10 Broadway productions that Danny Burstein has opened, he’s received Tony nominations for seven. So, this is luxury casting, but if we wonder what would make this recent Tony-winner take a smaller role than one to which he’s become accustomed, his final confrontation with Rose makes us understand what attracted him to the project.
And then there are the denizens of Wichita’s one and only burlesque theater. Mylinda Hull and Lili Thomas do well as two-thirds of “You Gotta Have a Gimmick,” but Lesli Margherita’s Tessie Tura is the cameo of the year, what with her side-of-the-mouth, wise-cracking delivery and her firm belief that she’s actually a ballerina who offers her customers a “revolution in dance.”
Laurents’ book holds up extraordinarily well, right down to one of the best dialogue exchanges rejoinders in Broadway history. McDonald snarls, “What did I do it all for?” as a flat-out dare for which she fully expects that Louise will not be able to come up with any answer, let alone a good one. Laurents gave Louise the best one possible, and Woods delivers it superbly when she calmy says, “I thought you did it for me, Mama.”
Checkmate! After all, parents are supposed to provide and make sacrifices for their children, aren’t they?
Then comes “Rose’s Turn,” where McDonald again shows she’s in full command. The applause she receives threatens to rival the length of the song.
Rose proclaims that she was “born too early and started too late”; we’re lucky that this isn’t Audra McDonald’s story, for we’re fortunate to live in a time when she continues to give us great performances.
When this production was announced, many theater mavens exclaimed “They’re reviving GYPSY again?!?!” However, the periodic gasps from theatergoers when they hear Rose’s machinations show that there are plenty for whom the story is brand-new. They may never see a production this strong again. Who’d expect that a moment that Wolfe found that involved a G-string would be tender and moving? But it is.
Dainty June may hate her act, but by the time that she sings ”Broadway, Broadway, how great you are!” we believe it, courtesy of – in alphabetical order – Audra McDonald and George C. Wolfe.