Audra McDonald comes up roses in Broadway revival

Any musical-lover knows that the question of a Gypsy revival is not whether the show will be an enjoyable night on the town. After all. it’s a treat to hear Jule Styne’s 1959 score and Stephen Sondheim’s clever lyrics performed with an orchestra in a historic Broadway venue, in this case the Majestic Theater. The question is if the actress playing OG stage mom Mama Rose can measure up to the women who’ve come before her — icons like Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, Patti LuPone, to name only a few.

The expectation for anyone walking into the Majestic is that Broadway veteran and six-time Tony Award winning Audra McDonald will measure up. She simply has to. It’s why the producers greenlit another production; it’s why the marquee spells out “AUDRA GYPSY,” like that’s the real title of the show. I almost feel bad for McDonald: How is it possible to perform under such pressure?

The trick seems to be that she doesn’t feel it… or, at least, show it. For the musical’s three hour runtime, McDonald is singularly focused on her character’s objectives — making her daughters vaudeville stars. She doesn’t merely play Rose; she embodies her. The vocals — which are, of course, rich and operatic and often jaw-dropping — feel utterly seamless with Rose’s way of expressing herself. Onstage, McDonald isn’t a Broadway diva, but a storyteller. This is why she’ll most likely break her own record in the spring as the most Tony-nominated performer of all time with what would be her 11th nod. To put it in Rose’s terms: She’s got it.

McDonald’s Rose is the most tender version of the role that I can possibly imagine, and you can feel the love sparkle between her and her daughter Louise (a stunning Joy Woods, fresh of The Notebook) alongside the resentment. Every character in the show finds Rose’s presence annoying at best, yet she’s intoxicating to watch. We can see the tension between her desire to give her daughters the acclaim and security she never had — in one of the first scenes, she resorts to eating dog food to make sure they get a square meal — and her desire to control them, to feel important.

With a musical like Gypsy, full of flash and wordplay, it’s easy for spectacle to overtake storytelling, yet George C. Wolfe’s direction makes every lead character’s psychological arc crystal clear. Every member of the lead cast (including Danny Burstein as Herbie and Jordan Tyson as June) is excellent, and the chemistry between them feels highly realistic, even in the stylized form of a musical about vaudeville.

This production is the best conceivable adaptation of the 1959 musical (as opposed to the current avant-garde revival of Sunset Boulevard, which I would call the best inconceivable adaptation). It’s the Gypsy you know and love, but with casting and directorial flourishes that nod to the way Black culture has shaped show business. And an emphasis on the notion that Black people have not received adequate monetary compensation for those contributions. This Gypsy poses the classic questions about daughters’ obligations to mothers who make sacrifices, yet the family’s relationship to capitalism has a contemporary sensibility. Both Walter White of Breaking Bad and Mama Rose say they’re providers, but are motivated by their own ego, and both literally say the words, “I did it for me.”

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With the advent of the Wicked movie-musical, theater kids are officially back in vogue, and they’re out in full force here. When the family’s act gets a major vaudeville booking from a man named “Mr. Goldstone,” they accost him with a dance and song that includes an endless riff on types of stones (“big stones and small stones/grindstones and gallstones”). In this production, it’s clear that this isn’t just Sondheim looking for rhymes; it’stheater people expressing themselves in the best way they know how, and loving the process, even if it may be grating to the bystanders.

The family’s vaudeville act itself is cringe — with a pageant-y child in uncanny makeup and references to “Uncle Sam” — but it’s also a reminder of the magic of theater, because yes, I was thrilled by watching a child actor do kicks and back handsprings, and yes, you’ll fall under that same  spell too, if you… ahem… let them entertain you. Grade: A–