Revivals of Gypsy are like cab drivers who don't speak English: You can almost always find one coming or going in Times Square. The latest, starring Patti LuPone as the maniacal Momma Rose, will close soon but Carolyn and I got to see it Saturday night and had a very good time, indeed. It really is an expertly crafted work with many a show-stopping tune and an overall unity of purpose that tells a strong, emotion-laden tale. This version reportedly recreates most of the original Jerome Robbins staging as well as the original orchestrations (which, I somehow only recently learned, were done in part by John Kander). The cast is generally solid so it pretty much comes down to a matter of Momma. A production of Gypsy is only as good as its Rose.
So how's Patti? Pretty wonderful, I'd say but with one quibble. Her Momma Rose is ruthless, unsentimental and all too human in an inhuman way. I saw a semi-professional production once in which the actress playing Rose — the woman who practically tortures her daughters in becoming stars so she can live vicariously through them — wanted us to love her. She kept winking (not literally) at the audience, as if to say, "You know I'm only doing this for their own good" and softening every rotten thing she could soften about Momma. To her credit, Patti LuPone does none of that. I am not discounting the possibility that the play's author, Arthur Laurents, who staged this production is largely responsible…but the point is that Momma Rose, as played by LuPone, is every bit the monster her makers intended her to be. Which is the only way the story really works.
She also succeeds in something that I always thought was the Catch-22 of Momma Rose: The role calls for a big, huge musical comedy star who can come out and belt out the best Broadway tunes and send shivers up our spines…but still convince us that she's a woman who could never have been a star herself. I never saw Ethel Merman play the role but she always seemed to me like perfect casting. Merman was a big, huge Broadway star who looked nothing like a big, huge Broadway star. One of several reasons the movie version never worked for me is that you look at Rosalind Russell and you see this tall, glamorous woman of accomplishment and breeding, and it's like Warren Beatty trying to play a guy who can't get laid. Ms. Russell just can't convince me she's an uneducated broad who's fighting her way out of poverty and failure, desperate for her first taste of success.
Patti LuPone obviously is a star with all the equipment to be a star…but she pulls off that sleight-of-hand. For 2 hours and 45 minutes of misdirection, she fulfills the demands of a star while making you believe she herself could never be one. Amazing.
So what's my quibble? You may think this is silly but even though we had great seats (fifth row, center aisle), I couldn't understand an awful lot of what she said.
Impressionists do Patti LuPone mumbling her way through numbers, slurring dialogue and being generally unintelligible. It's not true all the time but if I didn't know this show fairly well, I wouldn't have been able to make out about a fourth of what came out of her mouth. That's not fatal because not only do I know it, but I think most of the audience could recite much of the dialogue and all of the lyrics by heart…and I guess if you didn't know the material, there's still more than enough there to savor. But you'd also be frustrated because what you could comprehend seemed so perfect and you'd wonder what you were missing. It's a shame they can't have the whole stage closed-captioned or something.
As I said, that's a quibble. If you're thinking of going before it closes, don't let that stop you, even if you don't have the play memorized. And if you do miss it, don't worry. Another revival of Gypsy will be along before you know it. I'm guessing either Rosie O'Donnell, Liza Minnelli or everyone's favorite…Harvey Fierstein in drag. Hey, ya gotta get a gimmick.