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- [00:00]
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Thank you very much.
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That's all. But we have a great dramatic finish.
- [00:04]
A
Oh, I'm sure you do.
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But Mr. Greg, hit it. Broadway. Broadway. We've missed it. So we're leaving soon and taking June to star her in a show. Bright lights, white light, rhythm and romance. A trade is made. So while we wait, we're going.
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Hello all you theater lovers both out and proud and on the DL. And welcome back to Broadway Breakdown, a podcast discussing the history un legacy of American theater's most exclusive address, Broadway. I am your host, Matt Koplik, the least famous and most opinionated of all the Broadway podcast hosts. And we've got a biggie today. We got a new review that we gotta do. It is a little's known show, kinda underground, starring a whole cast of nobodies that have absolutely no following whatsoever. It's not like it's an anticipated event of the season or nothing. It is Gypsy. Starring six time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald, Tony winner Danny Burstein and a whole bunch of others. Directed by two time Tony winner George C. Wolfe. Choreographed by Camille A. Brown. Y' all have heard me talk about this production know coming up and how much I was looking forward to it, how high my expectations were. You know, this was, this was a big one for me and I can't wait to talk to you guys about it. Primarily because I am recording this as I am writing my review for this on Instagram. I did not get press seats for this show. I paid my own money to see it, to get a solid view of the stage and thus I can also write a review for it on Instagram. And I'm still kind of debating if I am gonna do it or not. Writing reviews on Instagram are really fucking hard. I don't really enjoy doing them anymore. And the Internet is wild. And so you put all this hard work and craft and care into it and then everyone just in bad faith or good faith or you know, surface level faith, just go on in. And even though the whole point of my reviews is that it's a take on work that people have done, I try to put a lot of thought and care into it. So it's always fun to do the same and then have people just write four words of just stupidity in the comments. So tbd, if I do that, if I do post it, it will be probably the last one I put on Instagram. Just because it's, I'm. I'm tired and I'm done and I'm not really all that excited to do it anymore. Before we get into the review on the podcast though, we did have a new review for Broadway Breakdown, so I just want to give that its due. And then we will head right into Gypsy. So cue the light and the Piazza Overture Music 5 stars Review from A Suburban mom it's pretty accurate. I stumbled across this podcast over the summer while trying to figure out why Lempicko was getting critically shredded while my kids couldn't stop singing along. Say what you will, the songs are total Bob's smiley face. We're a casual theater going family making it to two, three shows a year, so plenty of the references in Broadway Breakdown fly right over my head, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying Matt's sharp and insightful takes. His reviews have helped us discern what shows are up our alley or at least avoid a few missteps. As a big podcast fan, my usual lineup leans toward hosts like Peter Attia and David Puder. Heavy on the science, light on the sas. Matt, on the other hand, is a delightful change of pace. Fun, fiery and full of personality. Keep doing what you're doing, Matt. Us suburban moms are here for it. Thank you very much. I like that the moms are here for me. Or some mothers. Speaking of mothers, we got ourselves a mother today. Mother Rose. Mama Rose. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to go about talking about this. As I said, I'm in the middle of writing my review for this as well on Instagram, so there's going to be a lot of overlap with what I say. So you can either skip this or you can skip the Instagram review. Who cares? Nothing matters. Whatever I had said in the past Never underestimate Audra McDonald. Never underestimate George C. Wolf. These are two of my favorite artists to work in musical theater. George C. Wolfe has given me some of my favorite productions and even ones that I didn't get to see live, but I researched and went to the library to watch. I'm just in awe of As a writer and director, he's one of the smartest men to ever grace Broadway, and he has a particular fondness for the era in which Gypsy takes place in, which is to say, the 20s and early 30s, the heyday and then downfall of vaudeville. Look at the Wild Party and Shuffle along and Jelly's Last Jam. And he also is not afraid to tackle race in a way that might make audiences uncomfortable, but do make them think once again, Shuffle along and Jelly's Last Jam. But also Caroline or change Top Dog, Underdog, Bring in De Noise bring in defunct his original play, the Colored Museum, which is what really sort of put him on the map in New York City. So when it was announced that Audra was going to be starring in this, I, along with a lot of people, was a little throne. She was not really who I would have thought of for this role. My go to had always been in my dreams that George C. Wolf would direct this starring Toni Collette. And if not Toni Collette, then Heather Headley. And Audra is absolutely one of my favorite musical theater artists, definitely, who's currently living, but also just sort of of all time. She's so powerful on stage and she's such a smart actress and she's such an enticing actress. And her voice is, you know, one once in a generation kind of voice. Just the sound and the power of it. And a lot of people were on guard about this production for two reasons. One was, okay, would a majority black casted gypsy work? How would that work? And is Audra's voice going to be suited for this? Because a lot of people are used to, let's just say it, Belters in the role or Belter adjacent. The role of Rose was originated by famous belter Ethel Merman. It has also been done by Patti lupone, Bernadette Peters. Bette Midler did the TV film. I would argue two of the most iconic performances of Rose in Broadway history are probably the two weakest singers who've done it, Angela Lansbury and Tyne Daly. Lansbury had a strong voice, but I would not call her a belt her in the way that we call Patty or Ethel. And Tyne isn't really a strong singer, but she had a musicality to the way she sang Rose. And the cast recording with Hein Daly, which granted is still my favorite, if only from like the sheer fire of it all you have to do is watch videos of Tyne Daly and you know that she sounds so much better in the theater than she did on the cast recording. She famously had laryngitis. The Weisslers are penny pinchers. And so they would not move the recording date for Tyne. They did her very dirty. So her voice, her vocals on that recording are not the best, but they are better in the theater. Which is to say, you know, we've had a lot of singing actresses play Rose and maybe people are misremembering or they're conflating the past of just. Rose has always been played by these power Belters. She hasn't. Many different voices have played her. The key thing with Rose is that she has to have power in her voice. She has to have strength, command, even. So even if it's not a merman high belt, it has to be able to control the room and the audience. Because the one thing that Rose is, and this really isn't up for interpretation, is that she is driven, she's determined girl has tunnel vision. That is evident in the script where she's called a pioneer woman without a frontier and always in the middle of a sentence and just sort of dominating everybody. It's in the music. All of her music is very energetic and motorized. I wouldn't necessarily call it forceful. It ebbs and flows in its intensity, but it is always on the move. And I mean, even the opening notes of the overture are her I had a dream motif. And so you need that power when you're singing Rose. And it doesn't matter necessarily what you sound like or what kind of color you have in your voice. As long as you have the strength when you do it, you're on the right track. So I'll start off this way with Audra McDonald as Rose. Is that, yes, she actually does belt it more than a lot of people would assume. That's just a fact. She does. She begins some people and you're like, oh, like we're in a nice heavy chest voice, one we probably haven't heard since. I'd argue Marie Christine. And it's, you know, it's Audra. So there's a heaviness there. Audra definitely sings on the heavier side. And there are times when she is able to manipulate into her mix head voice and it's totally fine. I would argue the majority of some people is totally there. The only real section of that song that kind of was underwhelming for me is the. Towards the end, the Goodbye to Blueberry Pie. Goodbye to blueberry Pie. It's just not. It doesn't sit in her voice. Well, I would have preferred that they either upped the key two or lowered the key one, because where it sat was right on her passaggio, right on her break. So it just sounded thin. And this is a running motif in this show with her is that when her three biggest songs are at their most forceful, that's where they decide to change the key. So we've been hearing Audra sing in chest for so long now. She is in her head voice and it's not quite high enough to be powerful. So she's always like, kind of on a thinner, breakier side. Some people have argued to me that this works fine For Rose's turn at the end because she is having a breakdown. Fair, you're allowed to have that be your thing. I. It's harder for me to get on that train because the music goes against that. She is having a breakdown. But there is power in her commitment to the bit. You know, the majority of her breakdown is pre the end. You know, you're watching a woman slowly lose her grip on reality throughout the number. And then when we get to the most forceful part, though, someone tell me when it's my turn. It's a little bit of like a snapback too. Right. It's very clear headed and very focused. And thus the music reflects that. And whoever's playing Rose has to reflect that in how they attack the music. And this is where the music department has upped the key so much that Audra is now sitting in the break again. And it was disappointing for me because that. Because until then her voice was really in command of Roses Turn. Same thing with Everything's coming up Roses in command for the majority of the song until they upped the key. And I don't need it to be, you know, I loves you porgy high operatic. But if it's going to be in her head voice, it has to be in a part of her head voice where it is dominance. And it just wasn't that for me. That said, there is a lot of the score that she sings very well and I think that it is disingenuous to claim otherwise. You've had a lot of people online who say like, oh, she can't sing it. It's not a fit. She's not what you're used to. And then other people going like, yeah, it's not what you're used to. But like, God, is it thrilling. And I'm of the opinion that it's somewhere in between. There's a lot of what she's doing vocally that is wonderful. But I can't tell you that it works all the time, which is a shame on an acting perspective. The way I felt about Audra's Rose, and I've said it before, you know, Tyne Daly is my guiding star of women who've played Rose. Every actress has done something that I have found enjoyable and other things that I have caveats for. Of the Roses I've seen live, Bernadette is still my favorite. I can look back on that time and listen to her and watch videos of her and recognize where maybe she has some vulnerability in her performance that other Roses don't. But I also think she had a take on it that other roses couldn't, by being so feminine and cutesy and small. You know, Bernadette's Rose was a firecracker, but she also was very. You had a lot of sort of like the Ghost of Christmas Past with her when it came to watching June's act or watching Louise's act. And you saw the fire of what could have been and how these young women were born from this mother. And it's always hard to kind of remember that, that Louise and June come from Rose, that any intel, any intellect, any instincts, any talent comes from somewhere within her. But roses are also, again, as I said, they have to be driven, they have to have direction, they have to have a hustle. Rose is always hustling. There's always an angle to any scene she's in. Sometimes it's seduction, sometimes it's force, sometimes it's love. And that doesn't mean she doesn't feel those things genuinely as well. But there's always a little antenna in Rose that is on the attack and on the prowl, even when she's supposedly having a genuine moment with Herbie. And you'll never get away from me when they're doing together, wherever we go, she's always hustling. And Audra, as Rose, is much more interested in the woman, and primarily in the brokenness of the woman and the sensitivity of the woman, than she is in the shark. Her Rose has energy and she has drive. I'll say that she's got some drive, but her Rose doesn't really have a hustle, and her Rose doesn't really angle. She's pretty much more like a ball of energy with no place to put it, which is a fascinating idea for Rose of this woman who's got so much to give but nowhere to really let it out and. And thus puts it all in her kids. But that's the thing, is that she still does put it somewhere, whether it's in the act, whether it's in her children, whether it's in the strip or anything like that. She is always putting a little too much energy into the task, but she is putting it somewhere. And Audra, from what I saw, was much more just unable to find a pinpoint. In her scene with Uncle Jaco at the top, she is all this energy and momentum coming at you, which makes total sense. But then we go into the scene at her father's house right before some people, and it's just. She's not holding ground. She's not looking around. She's not working the room. She's not switching on a dime. She is just sort of. I don't want to use the word floundering because it's not messy. It's just. It's just muddled is what it is. It's not as razor sharp as it could be. And part of the reason why that's a problem is because this is also still musical comedy of the 1950s. There is a lot of that traditional DNA in Gypsy that you kind of have to have in your bones, and you do kind of have to gift if you're gonna sell the show to its best ability. There is so much meat in Gypsy. It is very much a family drama as well as a musical fable and musical comedy. It's what makes it such a rewarding yet challenging piece to do and why Rose is considered like the Mount Everest of musical theater roles. But you have to be able to play all those things. You can't just play the drama, you can't just play the comedy. You can't just play the monster, and you can't just play the vulnerability. What I've always felt with Audra McDonald as an actress, what she can do sort of pretty much better than anyone, definitely right now, but, you know, for many years is be this raw, open wound of just exposed nerves. She can tap into this watery well of emotion like no one else can. You see it in your daddy's son and Old Maid. If you saw Ohio State Murders, she did that. Even though I really did not like Ohio State Murders, that was something she was able to channel. And she can work a crown and she can work a room, and she's blending that into her Rose. But the vulnerability, the rawness she's giving the character doesn't always feel connected to what's actually happening. My feeling is when the character of Rose is pissed off, that is when Audra as an actress becomes suddenly locked into the role. Because now Rose has some one or somewhere to direct all of her energy and emotions at. When she's told by Gran Singer's secretary that she's got to stay away from June, the way she comes at Melinda hall, it's, you know, it's pointed, it is focused. It is everything that Audra's been working on on stage with a point of view. Now when she's doing Everything's Coming Up Roses, she is singing to Joy, she's singing to the audience. She has directive, and it works. When Herbie leaves and she's convincing Louise that she's got to go strip the way she goes about. Could be a little faster, as could this whole production, but she has a target and she has a, you know, a bullseye to get to. And that is when, for me, Audra is really strapped into the role. She has more trouble for me in the scenes where Rose has to be funny to an audience and Audra is funny. You know, as I said, just watch her in Carousel. She's a funny, funny gal, and she's funny in Gypsy. She's not like a killjoy. I don't want to make anyone think she's a wet blanket, but it does need to be sharper. Part of that is her. Part of that is the direction. You know, George C. Wolffe is such a brilliant man. I would not call him a musical comedy director. And especially of this era of writing, which is a shame, because this is an era of American history that he loves and loves exploring, but much more from a modern perspective. He's had trouble with revivals in the past. He had an infamously misfire, infamous misfire with on the Town in the late 90s. And this is not to that level. But I also do not think that this is the triumph I wanted it to be. People are asking about the race component of this show, and it's not my place to speak on the journey of a black woman in America. Much as I, you know, connect with every character in the Color Purple, that is not my place to speak on. As an authority, what I can tell you is what I saw and how, you know, maybe it was a disconnect from what I was hoping or expecting. The truth is that it's entirely possible my expectations were just far too sky high. As someone who's again, spent years wanting George C. Wolfe to be the director of the next revival of Gypsy, ever since Arthur Lawrence died and we could get it out of his clutches, I was like, great. This is a man who will infuse this show with the blood, sweat and tears that it needs again. Because we had gotten to a point with Gypsy where it was almost treated with curator gloves of. It's this great work. It's musical theater lore, and we must respect it as such. And, yes, you respect the material, but you get your hands dirty while doing it. You have fun with it. And when you add the race component, I was like, oh, this is a man. George Seawolf is a man who has put blackface on the Broadway stage more times than. Than you would care to think. This is a man who has a fascination with the 1920s and 30s. This is a man who really has no problem putting the uncomfortable on stage for people while marrying with showbiz razzmataz. And when the casting breakdown came out for Gypsy of oh, we now have Dainty June being played by an actress who's going to be mixed race and Louise has to be darker raced. And we're going to have black newsboys and then when they're older, they're going to be white. We're doing something. You're like, okay, okay, we got a point of view. The bottom line is that race is actually not a huge component of this production and it doesn't have to be, but it touches on race enough that for me, I wanted it to go further. Obviously, it's clear in the casting and in the wig design that June is put to the front not just because she's more talented, but because she's lighter skinned and as she's a kid, she gets blonde highlights in her hair and then has a much blonder wig and she's older. And I thought there could have been more done about that. You know, have Rose kind of absent mindedly always powdering June and June has to do it herself now and just constantly leaning into the idea of white presenting white audiences crossing the barrier to make it to the other side. And the way they do the transition of the newsboys from when they're younger to older, it's no longer the flashing effect, the strobe light effect of the original, which was a very concise and very clear way to show the time had passed. But because we are now swapping out the boys, we can't really do that strobe light effect anymore. And what we have instead is a transition where it's like three minutes, maybe four of Audra coming on stage periodically and swapping out a boy with a white older newsboy. And then eventually, you know, slowly putting Louise closer to the back of the act. That is Louise going to, you know, the, the digression of Louise from being the company of Baby June and company to being one of the newsboys, to being put in the back to being in the cow. This is something that is already in the script, right? And it's something that actually marries very well with the concept of casting these actresses as light skinned and dark skin and swapping out the newsboys for white newsboys. That's where you don't actually have to change a word of text. Just how the show already does that fits the that that perspective already. And that's a wonderful marriage right there. There is nothing really else about it. Though that is touched on. There's nothing about the act in its aesthetic. There's nothing about the act in its musical stylings because the show, in a lot of ways is still married to the original orchestrations. There are some new dance arrangements, but it is still in the style of the gypsy we have come to know and love. And so there's no real change in the act from when it's an all black act to a mixed race act. Not aesthetically and not musically. Outside of, you know, June having a slightly blonder wig and Louise being in the cow, the dancing is not all that different. The attitude is not all that different. It's maybe a little smoother and a little less harsh, I would say, because they definitely direct Baby June to be a much harsher child performer, which I am totally here for. But also. Yeah, it's just, it's. It's one of those things where the idea is there and it's bubbling, but it hasn't fully cooked. And we tie this to Joy woods as Louise when she becomes Gypsy Rose Lee. And her final strip, somebody wrote how that final strip actually worked very well for them. And what that was, was Joy comes out and does the first strip of the Let me entertain you. And they have, by the way, cut the dialogue that she has when Rose says to her, say something. And she says hello, and then notices that everybody's paying attention to her and says, everybody. And does the whole June line. My name is Gypsy Rose lee. What's yours, Mr. Conductor, if you please. They've cut all of that and I'll get to why that pisses me off in a second. But so we then have the second strip where she does a little bit of patter. The third strip where she does the akadesiast monologue, which is normally in the fourth strip. And I was like, why did they put that in the third strip? What is she going to do for the fourth strip? And then they do the fourth strip, which is set in the Garden of Eden. And she is dressed up to look very much like Josephine Baker. That is not projection. It's legitimately what she's looking like. And you can read articles that state, like, this is intentional. And someone wrote online, because I was watch. I was reading Other Perspectives to see exactly like what other people were getting from it, that maybe I was missing or how it connected with them, that it didn't connect with me. And if that maybe altered anything about my opinion. And someone said, well, you know, Rose is spending the whole show trying to appeal to a white audience by whitening the act. And then Louise comes into her own blackness and the exoticism of her ethnicity for these audiences. And that ultimately is more successful than Rose could ever hope for. That is why, like with the Josephine Baker style of it all and embracing the beauty of her ethnicity. And I'm like, okay, I get that in theory we have a point A to point B, and those are really powerful pictures to have on the bulletin board. The problem is there is really no string strong enough to connect the two outside of just the images themselves. There is nothing throughout the production that supports that. There are moments here and there that sort of poke at it lightly stir the pot, I would say, but nothing that fully cooks it, nothing that fully draws a line that says, and it does not have to be overt. Lord knows I hate things that are overt. But I would argue it's not even really subtle. It's not even nuanced. It's just little tiny moments that kind of tickle at it without making it an actual through line of Rose loving the blonde wig, but Rose not doing really anything else outside of swapping out the newsboys and loving the blonde wig that would insinuate she is trying to gain a white audience. There is nothing else that insinuates that Rose is longing for a white inclusion or uncomfortable by white inclusion. There's no code switching in this production. It's pretty much everyone is pretty much intermingled. There's no subtle racism from white characters in the show towards the black characters. It's all just sort of the race doesn't matter in this production except for the couple of moments where it does. And it's not anything that bothers me per se, because I could do a color conscious casting of Gypsy where no, it. It's all blended together like the 94 carousel, where it's like, this is a fable. We're on a stage, deal with it. Everyone here is going to bring their talent and their own life perspectives to these roles. But George C. Wolfe is not a director who normally does that. And he brings some of his intelligence and his digging of race in America to the show, but not a lot and definitely not as much as I was expecting. So maybe it's my own fault for thinking there was going to be a bit more of that brashness and that, I don't want to say touchiness, but like, you think about how he and Lachiusa collaborated on the Wild Party and what, you know, race meant to them in that show. And I mean, that's going Pretty far with race in the entertainment industry and in America and of that era. And this, I mean, this is like beginner kitty version of that. I don't need it to go full blown Mandy Patinkin and blackface, But I would have liked a little more because, as I said, that connection from Baby June and company with the blonde wig and her being lighter skin to Louise becoming basically Josephine Baker coated is an interesting arc to go on, but the arc actually isn't there. We just have our beginning and we just have our end. What pisses me off about that strip, not the Josephine stuff, but what pisses me off about that strip is taking away the dialogue from the first and the last segments. Because Gypsy as a musical bears about as much resemblance to the real Gypsy Rose Lee's life as Funny Girl does to Fanny Brice, which is to say, not a hell of a lot. And part of that is because Gypsy Rose Lee was a famous liar and her memoir was also like, basically a novel and not an actual memoir. And Arthur Lawrence kind of just made up whatever he wanted for the sake of the musical. The one thing that they made a point of getting right, though, and this is because Gypsy Rose Lee was still very much a public figure when the musical came out, was they got right what made her famous and what made her special, which is that she took the lowest rung of entertainment, that of being striptease in burlesque, turned it into an art form, and became internationally famous for doing so. And she didn't really sing, she didn't really dance. She could do a little bit of both, but never to the extent that she would be the star of a musical number. She didn't even strip all that much. She would. She would go through degrees of undressing in her acts, depending on how she was feeling that night. Sometimes it would be a glove and a shoulder strap, sometimes it would be right down to her underwear. But what she did was that she spoke to the audience. She spoke on whatever she wanted to her thoughts on politics, books, foreign policy, with a wit and a sophistication and a charisma and command that most women at the time, and let's be honest, still today have trouble owning. You know, this country is notoriously sexist, has been for its entire history, and continues to be. Maybe, you know, we've had progress over the years, but we still see how much further we need to go and how we keep sort of pulling back from. From that kind of progress. So for Gypsy Rose Lee to take the thing that so many people don't want women to do, which is talk, speak up their mind and make that not only her gimmick, but what makes her absolutely successful and what makes, you know, what. What is her drawing power. People pay to watch her do that. There is so much strength in that and so much dynamics to that, and it's important to see that spark happen on stage. Now, granted, the text that I was referring to in the strip of the hello, everybody and all of these jokes, that's not in the original 1959 Arthur Lawrence libretto. He's been very vocal. Was very vocal. He's dead. He was very vocal that Sandra Church, who was the original Louise, was not the greatest actress, and she could do the wallflower stuff, but she couldn't really do the transition into Gypsy Rose Lee as well. And so they cut a lot of dialogue in those strips, and it just became sort of pantomime. But with the Angela Lansbury revival onwards, which I believe came to Broadway in 74, maybe 73, and was in London the year prior. So for over 50 years now, the text has. That text has been in the Gypsy script, and it has become what we all know, and it absolutely improves the second act. And this revival does include some of that text still, just in different places. So we can't even argue. Well, in the original script, which they're following, they're not doing that. They're still using the edits just differently and, in my opinion, weaker. We don't see the moment in that first strip when Louise accidentally says hello, looks out and realizes that everyone's paying attention to her, that she has a superpower. She can talk and everyone will listen. June can sing and dance, they'll applaud. Rose can steamroll into an office. People will sort of relent. The other strippers can parade around with their skin exposed for hoots and hollers, and then sort of walk off stage. But Louise controls the room simply by being Louise and by saying whatever she wants. And she doesn't immediately become Gypsy Rose Lee in that moment, but it's when the seed has officially begun to sprout. And we know that Louise wants to control the room. We know that Louise wants to be noticed. That's the whole point of All I Need is the girl. And I'll get into that in a second with this production. But by cutting that and then by making her final strip, not even a strip, but just a dance number, we've actually now robbed that character of what makes her fame special as a woman. She is famous for talking, and she has taken the least respected performance style and made it respected. She has become a celebrity. For is not about owning your exoticism. It is about owning your power. It is about tricking an audience into submitting to your power. You can find a way to blend that into the exoticism of being a bipoc woman in this country. But I think personally have her still, you know, be Josephine Baker coated with her wig and her outfits, but still fucking do the ecdesias monologue and that whole bit around the passerelle, talking to the audience for five minutes straight and just commanding the room. You make her a dancer and she's just like any other performer. She's not like any other performer. That's why we have a musical about her, because it is ultimately still about her. It's called Gypsy. You know, Rose is the lead, but Louise is the major arc. She is who gets the payoff in the end because she's the character that the whole thing is based off of. And so it just bugs me because this is something that I don't understand why George C. Wolfe and Camille A. Brown decided to lean into. It feels more to me like the idea of incorporating historical components into the show without actually acknowledging what makes certain pockets of that book take off. You know, some people will really enjoy the newness of it, but a lot of us who have seen the show before, and this is the problem with revivals, they get done because we know that the show works. And for something like Gypsy, it's been done many times, so we know that it has worked many times. And you want someone to bring something fresh to it. But when moments like this get altered, it makes me question how well they understand the material. It's almost like the green M and M test of, like, how Van Halen would put on, like, the fourth page of their contract in the third paragraph, only green MMs in the dressing room. And it was a test to see if the venue read through the entire contract because they had a lot of safety concerns with the pyrotechnics of their show and the sound equipment for their show. So if they walked into a dressing room and saw that there were green MMs in the dressing room, it meant that the venue read through the entire contract. And if they weren't in there, it meant that the venue did not. And that is sort of what ultimately made or broke their playing anywhere. And I didn't think that the strip would have to be a green M and M test for me with Gypsy, but right now it kind of is of like oh, you cut the thing that makes Louise Gypsy Rosely, and you've changed it for, you know, something else that doesn't really make sense and isn't connected to anything else. So that is something that bugs me. There are other things that I do like, and I will get into that, as well as other things that I want to discuss after this break.
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You're an arrow collar. You're the top. You're a Coolidge dollar. You're the nimble tread of the feet of Fred Astaire.
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And we're back. Another thing that I wanted to sort of get into a quick bit is the choreography of this Gypsy. There have been a lot of complaints online about the choreography, also about the design of the show. A lot of people saying that the sets look cheap. I don't think that the sets look cheap. I just think that it's all very poorly stunned spaced. The Majestic is a very large stage, and this production uses a lot of dead space, which I think is a mistake, because that means the cast has to now fight for their lives in this cavernous space and really go to the back of the. Of the wall. And there's a lot of subtle work happening in the show that is not making it past the seventh or eighth row, which is a shame. So I wish that the design were a little more closed in and the actors didn't have as much of a vast expanse to have to, you know, play off of. But the choreography is something that is interesting to me. The original production and all the subsequent revivals had used the original Jerome Robbins choreography, which is, you know, I wouldn't call it necessarily iconic choreography. It's not west side Story level of, you know, where everyone just knows the moves. But I kind of did realize how many moments in his staging we have to sort of associate it with Gypsy, like the strobe light effect, like certain moments of Baby June's act, and also with All I Need is the Girl, which is where Tulsa, one of the boys in the act, sort of performs an act that he's working on for Louise in the alley outside the theater. And the whole point of it is that he says people always pay attention to the girl. But I want an act where it's about me and she's sort of my partner. I. I just don't have the girl yet, but I've been working on it. And he does the whole thing and narrates it to Louise. And the first half of the number is about Tulsa. We're watching him be charming. We're watching him Dance. It's all very sweet. As he's narrating what would be happening during the act. Things like this move is good for the costume and things like that, which is very sweet. And when the girl appears, he talks about taking her hand and leading her onto the floor.
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And.
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And we see Louise behind him bring her hand out in her own mind, and he talks about lifting her. And we watch Louise feel in her mind being lifted. And that moment is important. The second half of All I Need Is the Girl is about Louise. It is us finally seeing when she's alone. She, too, wants to be the pretty girl at the pretty center. She does want the acknowledgment. She wants the attention. And she does have a crush on Tulsa that is very clear. You have to see that hope and that joy before it's eventually pulled away from her. In the next scene, when we find out that Tulsa has eloped with June so they can do the act together, that heartbreak doesn't really come across here because the number in this production is honestly all about Tulsa. Louise shows up at the very, very end to dance the last, like, 30 seconds with him and then goes back to the stage door where she's been sitting this entire time. Again, so far back, because the set is like, we have all the space in the world. Let's just place things in Siberia. And it's a shame because it's a major plot point for her character arc. Instead, the number is just so concerned with the dancing and the actor who plays Tulsit's Kevin Schoelik, I think is. How you say his name? It's. It's C S O L A K. Kevin Cholak. Cholik. Something like that. He's a very good dancer. He's a very charming man. I remember he had a small part in Insane Inside Amy Schumer a long time ago. Or he was, like, part of a fake One Direction band. And I thought he was very funny in that. But he dances the number well. But again, it's not about him. And the movement isn't reminiscent of Fiera. It's not reminiscent of musical theater. Know how I'm a big fan of Camille A. Brown? I feel like her best work is when it just comes organically from text or organically from ensemble work. Things like Choir Boy and Once on this island and For Colored Girls. She did really masterful work of ensembles just sort of breaking out into organic movement that came from the hips and came from extended arms and legs. They're just flowing all over the stage. Gypsy is Not a show like that someone wrote about, like, oh, it's, you know, she comes from the Alvin Ailey world and that's sort of how she choreographs. But that's not the era of Gypsy. The era of Gypsy is vaudeville. It is presentational, it is performative. And then we go into burlesque, which is. That is much more hip bumping and grinding, but it's not free flowing, it's not earthbound. It is all about angles and edges and, and pop and popping your hips and popping your ass and things like that. Gypsy is both glitz and glamour and grease paint and sawdust. Which is also why I've never understood why people are like, oh, it needs to be a more glamorous set. Gypsy has never had glamorous sets. Half of the show takes place in backstage of theaters and run down hotel rooms. But you can have sort of the allure of the footlights while also smelling the toxicity of the grease paint. That is something that George Seawolf has always been really fantastic at doing in his shows and is very much missing here. It's a very cold feeling production because it feels so methodical. And it all stems from Audra as Rose, because how your Rose is, is how your production of Gypsy works. If your Rose is a forceful presence, how she moves and how she talks extends out to everyone else in the show and everything around her. And Audra's Rose is very methodical and she's very mindful and thus the production kind of is. And Camille A. Brown's choreography is maybe one of the few things in the show that I think actually has genuine energy to it, but it doesn't have musical theater structure or know how. And this is a show where you can't get around needing that. Numbers build in a way that you have to understand intrinsically. And it's one thing if the Baby June and her newsboy numbers had a wild flair to them that was reminiscent of like jazz age Harlem, of just like wild dance steps and moves and tapping and kicking and all these things and hip bumps that there is some of that, but it's all kind of a mishmash. And then for Rose, as the act progresses to streamline it, as she's watching other acts that take off into the sunset in front of white audiences and stealing from those to make her act much more polished, think of like if you've seen the movie Singin in the Rain in that movie number where he. Where Gene Kelly's pitching the, you know, opening scene to the new edit of the movie. They're making the Broadway Melody song. And his character goes from like burlesque into vaudeville into Broadway, into, like the Ziegfeld Valleys. And the same section of the number is done over and over again to first with like, you know, randy chorus girls. And he's on his knees as a little jester. And then they do it again in a much nicer theater and the girls are a little more dressed up and he's now off his knees. But there's still a lot of energy to it. And eventually it builds to the point that they get to the Ziegfeld Follies version of the number and he's in tailcoats. The chorus girls are in essentially showgirl ball gowns. And they're barely moving because it's elegant. Now, that kind of progression is something that I feel the choreography is missing of watching how the world around them is influencing the act, which normally isn't how those numbers are supposed to go. The whole point is that Rose has such blinders on. She is blind to the depression, to the death of vaudeville, that tastes are changing, that the kids are getting older and what worked because they were 5 and 6 looks ridiculous now that they're 18. The joke that she says, oh, I've thought of a whole new number for Grant Singer. And the opening is the exact same opening it always has been. Now it's just on a farm. That is sort of in the text how that dancing is choreographed. We have to go a little different with this one because of how it's cast, because we are making race. Not a blind issue here. So that is absolutely all respectful. What I'm saying is that I did not see that journey happen through Brown's choreography, Nor did I feel that her choreography had any kind of build to it, which, to be fair, I've never really felt that her choreography had build in the past, but in the past didn't matter because it all flowed in and out of song and dialogue. She's never really had, up until maybe Hell's Kitchen, a show where she had full blown dance numbers that needed to have a beginning, middle and end. And I will leave Hell's Kitchen on the side because I can't go on about that show anymore. So this was sort of, for me, a test of like, okay, can she do this style of theater? And ultimately, I don't think that she can. At least not yet. This might have just been her first go at it. Maybe let's try it again at some point. I had heard word that she was in Talks to Workshops, a production of Ain't Misbehavin that she was going to direct and choreograph, and I'm super down for that. That's actually a show where the choreography can be a little more of what she's doing here, where it is just nothing but energy and it doesn't necessarily have to have a musical theater structure to it. But until then, I can't say that I enjoy the choreography here. I just don't. It is a lot with no perspective in my mind when it comes to the rest of the cast. No one is objectively bad, but it does feel like most of the performances are still under baked. A lot of moments of clarity, a lot of moments of shining shininess, but very little connection throughout the performance that I thought was the closest to being fully realized was Jordan Tyson as Dainty June. I thought that she understood the brassiness of June's performance style as well as the bitterness of her everyday life and finding the subtle digs at her mother, at everyone around her, because she is trapped in this gilded cage where she is treated as the star of an act that she hates by a mother who loves her, but who June does not respect. And feeling just so alone. No one around her understands her. No one around her cares to understand her. She is just the meal ticket because she's at the front, which also means that she gets the most embarrassment out of it because she has to have her face on the front of this act that she hates. And I got all of that. I think there's more she can do with it. And I feel like in a more fiery, tighter production of Gypsy, she would be the best Dainty June I've ever seen. As it is, she is a really good Dainty June. She's not quite there for me yet. I'll put this she is the best Dainty June I've ever seen. I'll put it that way. But she could be the best Dainty June of all time in a better production because I have issues and I have pluses and minuses with people like Leanne Larkin's Dainty June with Kate Reinder's Dainty June in the Bernadette one. I saw Laura Bell Bundy do it with Betty Buckley at Paper Mill. I barely remember her in that. But of the Junes I've seen live, Jordan is definitely the best one I've seen. I think she could be the ultimate in a much more focused production because I never really equated Georgie Wolfe with coldness. He's a bold and Brash director who really brings heat to the stage. Anyone who saw Shuffle along will tell you the fire that was on that stage and the style and the attitude that it had and the masterstrokes of theatricality. He is so good at marrying controversial hot button topics with just eye opening spectacle and theatricality and an air of heat and sizzle that so few directors I find can connect to. And not just Shuffle along, but even Caroline or Change. That original production of Caroline or Change was just such a poetry. He was able to isolate that stage in a way where it was a simplistic set. There wasn't a lot of it. And you understood the isolation and the loneliness that every character had. And you think about him in Shuffle in Jelly's Last Jam. Talk about pushing the boundaries of race. That whole Act 1 finale of Jelly's Last Jam was the ensemble coming out in bellhop outfits with white painted lips. That show is about a man who brought so much to the jazz era, but was a self hating black man. And that fascinated George Seawell. If you watch some of the colored museum on YouTube, it's incredible. He's such a smart, smart man. Which is why it boggles my mind that this production is so. It's respectful to the point of cautious for a lot of the time. And then when they do a bold stroke, it's something like the Strip. It's something like the transition into older kids and you understand where they're coming from. But you are thrown as to the execution because being on the sloppier, longer, more winded side is something that sort of George starts with and then throughout previews, tightens and refines and zeroes in on. And I've had some people see the last week of previews and claim that it's totally there. I've had some people see it in the last week or previews and are like, I don't know what everyone's smoking. The night I saw it, I took my friend. It was like two, three days before they froze it. And I went with my friend, who will remain nameless. And the woman next to me at intermission was like, oh, this could open tomorrow. My friend left at intermission. I am somewhere in the middle. This is a revival of Gypsy that is not a total disaster. And again, maybe my expectations were just too high. But it was not what I really wanted it to be. I wanted it to be an event. I wanted it to be the revival that challenged Sunset Boulevard off of its axis. Sunset Boulevard, I think, is a bad musical given a fascinating and Interesting production that ultimately is memorable and captivating because of how locked in it is with its vision. This production of Gypsy is okay when it's at its best. You know, there are long stretches where you're like, this is fine. They're not doing anything terrible, but there's no heat to it. There's no sexiness to it. Small World with Rose and Herbie, Audra and Danny Burstein are basically are on opposite ends of the stage the entire time. It's not a seduction, it's not a maneuver. It's just two people singing at each other. I don't know what the angle is on it, not even Rose's angle, but the directive angle of it. And Danny Burstein is fine in the show. You know, he's never bad. Danny Burstein is either wonderful or he's like miscast usually. He's just. He's such a. Like Audra. He's such a smart, talented actor who's been around for so long that he just knows what to do and how to do it. And he's a solid Herbie, but I can't say he's a particularly memorable Herbie. And Herbie's not like the role of all roles, but there's. There's stuff there. You don't really buy his connection with Audra. They feel more like people who've known each other for a long time and thus are stuck with each other. You don't see the draw she gives, she has with him, what keeps bringing him in. You don't see the love. You don't see the conflict of him loving her but not respecting her, of being so weak and desperate for her approval that he's willing to overlook so many terrible things that she does. You just sort of watch a man exist and it's. It's not terrible, but it's not particularly great. And then Joy as Louise, I find that she's far too strong is not the right word, but. But she's a little too confident in herself for me. In Act 1, she is there and she has no fancies about herself, but also she does not have any kind of vulnerability for me. You don't see the inner turmoil of wanting love and acknowledgement, but. But being too gun shy to do anything. She's just sort of there and the strip. Not only is she undermined by the changes, but she doesn't give you a progression of confidence, of elegance. And her final dressing room scene with Audra is mostly muted. To me, Audra's coming at her with everything and joy. Just sort of stands there and recites. And there's a power to that of not letting the other person get to you so hard. And Lord knows, by the end of the Patti LuPone Gypsy Run, that cast was going on for so long, the show was over three hours. And just every line became important and it bothered the fuck out of me. And we're not doing that here, thank goodness. But there could be a touch more blood in it right now. It's a little too even footed, I guess, is the best way to describe it. I haven't really spoken much of the strippers. Leslie Margarita is solid. She does exactly what you would expect Leslie Margarita to do if you've seen Leslie Margarita in a show. And I've seen her in Dames at Sea and twice in Matilda. So, like I, she's doing what I've seen her do. It works. She knows how to do it. But it wasn't particularly surprising to me. I was very happy to see Melinda hall as Elektra and also as. What's the name of the secretary? Ms. Cratchit. Honestly, Melinda Hall's casting, when it was announced, was something that really intrigued me because I had last seen her in the Connector. And that woman, for my money, stole that show out from everyone. And she didn't sing a note, she just recited. She had letters that she had as monologues throughout the show. And she was just so good. She's such a good actress, and she's very good in this. There's also the Mazeppa blanking on her name. Let me find it here. Oh, sorry. Yes. Because Leslie's Tessitura Mazeppa is Lily Thomas, who I had never seen before. And she's very good. She had a very smoky, brashy, belting voice from Mazeppa, which I appreciate. I liked that they didn't go too pingy belty with these roles. They went with three women who are genuine character actresses with husk to their demeanor. And they, you know, the strippers always bring the house down. That's gotta get a gimmick. Is just one of those showstoppers that is foolproof no matter who does it, as Arthur Lawrence famously yelled to Sam Mendes. But of the three, I would say Melinda hall was my personal favorite. I appreciate that they didn't make Baby June too cutesy. They made her kind of a terror, which was great. The other thing about the design is that there's also no cohesive theme to it. Some sets are very realistic and some are very impressionistic, like Rose's dad's House is done like a vaudeville flat with his stove smushed up against the wall. But then right after that we have a hyper realistic car that Rose is driving in Louise's dressing room when she's Gypsy. Rose Lee is very realistic. Grandsinger's as realistic. Other things are much more spread out and impressionistic. So I did not find there to be a cohesive viewpoint for it. Which is maybe another reason why people find it cheap. Because some things are hyper realistic and some things are simple. And some people might find the simple settings to be, you know, budget conscious. And I don't think they're budget conscious. I just. I'm not entirely sure what the point of certain settings were. That's really all I gotta say. Sound design was alright, although I felt that that orchestra sounded like it was under quite a few pillows. It's a large orchestra, they're relatively tight sounding, but it's just muffled. Similar to my issue with the sound design for Sweeney Todd. The Majestic theater looks gorgeous. This is not a terrible production of Gypsy. This is not a production that I find particularly exceptional. But I will also say I said the same thing about the Patti LuPone gypsy and right before they opened, I found that in that production, the best thing about it was Laura Benanti and Laura Benanti's Strip. And it got really great reviews. The three of them won their Tony Awards. People still talk about Patty's Gypsy to this day. People talk about Imelda Staunton's Gypsy. People talk about Tyne and Bernadette. I've said it before, Tyne is my Rose. That production of Gypsy is my favorite production that I've been able to encounter, whether live or viewing on a screen. And I don't think that's going to change now. I look forward to seeing how this show does in the season and on the Tonys. It's selling very well right now, but revivals are notoriously front loaded and the buzz around this production hasn't been to the extent of Sunset. So even if the reviews are strong, I do think there's going to be a push and pull with audiences. There are people who have their line in the sand expectations with what this show should sound like and be. I know that I am not innocent in that as well. But I try to be open minded and I try to meet a show for where it's at and see what's there and analyze it as such. And then they're gonna be people who really love what they're doing here and love that it's New and love Audra and love the whole thing. I can't say that I'm gonna be convinced of this production's greatness. I may go back at some point later in the run to sort of see how things continue to settle, but there are enough things in this production that just are not for me. And that's sort of just where we're at. You know, it's. It's a crushing disappointment for me. I love this musical. I had such high hopes I. I never thought I would get. My wish that George C. Wolff would direct it. And a chance to see Audra on stage is always a great thing to do. But that's sort of the problem with having hopes and dreams is when they're not met, they really can upset you. And I gotta admit it, this production, despite not being a travesty, did upset me. I'm kind of sad that this is where I'm at with it. I wanted more, I wanted to feel more from it. But that's it for now. Tomorrow is. This episode's coming out on Thursday, which is when Gypsy opens. So this is instead of our usual deep dive. Tomorrow we will release the nine episode with Kevin Duda. And then next week is going to be my evaluation of the Broadway season so far and how I personally would assign maybe some Tony nominations. Where we're at so far in the season with a minimum of two and a maximum of five nominees per category. So I have to pick two at least for every category, no matter what, how, no matter how I felt about, you know, plays or musicals or whatever. So stay tuned for that next week. Again, nine is tomorrow and I'm gonna do something crazy today. I'm gonna close this out with the overture to the Tyne daily recording of Gypsy. Because that overture is my favorite. That's my favorite recording of that overture. And so I want to give Eric Stern his due and that tight ass orchestra their due. That's it for now. Thank you for listening through my ramblings and I hope you guys, you know, have a good rest of your holidays. Good Christmas, good. Hanukkah, good. Whatever. Good New Year's and stay warm out there. All right, take it away, Eric. By it.