Ke3 said: "If someone so much as hovered a pen over the script of Gypsy, none of us would have time to feel the warnings before the sun exploded."
This comment wins. I laughed out lout. And I agree that unlike Cabaret, the various "revisals" of which were made by the still living book writer Joe Masteroff, and were generally seen as improvements - the book to Gypsy has remained unchanged for decades, and like the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, should be left untouched and not retrofitted for modern sensibilities. That said, I don't think anyone would complain if Laurents' book for West Side Story got some light retouching.
There have been black Roses before. It's a musical. If Audra McDonald plays the role, the production doesn't have to be realistic treatment of time and place.