GYPSY F'in Rocks

Don't you agree? Let's hear it folks. HUZZAH!

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It is # 5 on my list of all time favs. Which Rose do you guys think is the best?

I always thought it was Lansbury. That is until I saw Lupone (Who I usually can't stand). She was amazing!!! Couldn't believe it.

Tyne Daly was pretty great too. Her and Lansbury both acted the role the best.

I have only seen Bette Midler in the t.v. version and heard Merman, Midler, and Lansbury. Out of those three, I think Merman ownes it.

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All next week, I'm lucky enough to be playing Tulsa, in a fantastic production of such a wonderful show. I can't wait!

Bernadette is my favorite. It's an amzing show.

I have seen all of the Broadway Mama Roses and Ethel Merman is the best. I saw her three times in NYC and twice on its tour.Merman owns the part.I remember how excited I was before seeing GYPSY each time. I would also pick Tyne Daly over Angela Lansbury--I realize this is a sacrilege to many theatregoers, but I feel that Lansbury overdid "Rose's Turn" in her interpretation as a woman going mad, no doubt aided by director Arthur Laurents. She attacked that number with a sledgehammer approach which simply isn't necessary. The script of "Rose's Turn" has all of the pauses and hesitations and repititions and loud outbursts built in. Sondheim and Styne knew what they were doing. Anything more is overkill. Remember, Jerome Robbins directed and choreographed the original production. Arthur Laurents directed subsequent versions, using the Robbins choreography. Laurents also changed the Minsky's strip number to Minsky's Garden of Eden sequence. The former,directed by Robbins, Minsky's Salute to Christmas, was far funnier: it featured "nudes" (with Christmas ornaments covering their boobs) on a Christmas tree and "slithering show girls", ending with a giant present opened to reveal Gypsy Rose Lee; it was purposely loud and garish and the audience howled with laughter.

Incidentally, I have a huge, framed blowup of the Merman playbill cover like the one at the start of this thread.

Note to:Ciaron McCarthy --you seem young. How do you know about Merman's acting in GYPSY? Did you see her on stage or have you just read accounts by others? If you had seen her in GYPSY I think you would have been impressed, as were all the critics who noted her superb acting in the show.That said, I would love to see Patti LuPone play the part in a Broadway production, but,as has been said in other threads, Laurents and LuPone do not get along and Laurents has refused to allow her to play the part of Mama Rose on Broadway.

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Updated On: 10/16/06 at 12:41 PM

"The script of "Rose's Turn" has all of the pauses and hesitations and repititions and loud outbursts built in. Sondheim and Styne knew what they were doing. Anything more is overkill."

Yes, but didn't Sondheim love Angelas work in "Gypsy"? In that famous interview he did with Frank Rich he seemed less than enthuised with Mermans "Rose".

btw you are so lucky to have seen them all. I've only seen Lupone, Daly, Bernadette, Buckley, Midler and Russel.

:::EDIT::: Here it is:

"I prod Sondheim to dish Merman, the star whose career was bookended by Porter's "Anything Goes" in the 30's and "Gypsy" a quarter-century later. He doesn't demur: "I've made a joke that is both glib and I suppose slightly tasteless about her being an illustration of the old anecdote that it isn't remarkable that the dog lost playing chess -- it's the fact that the dog plays chess. What was remarkable was watching a woman who everybody assumed couldn't act, act. Now, it's a limited kind of acting. She didn't quite understand what 'Rose's Turn' was about."

In a key moment in that legendary "Gypsy" finale, a musicalized nervous breakdown, Rose is supposed to stutter over the word "mama" to indicate "you were seeing a mind crack" -- a device Sondheim says he stole from Jessica Tandy's Blanche DuBois in the last scene of "A Streetcar Named Desire." But as he tells it, no matter how elaborately Merman was invited to ride the moment emotionally, she had only one question about the stutter: "Does it come in on the downbeat?" Speaking of the 1974 Broadway revival with Angela Lansbury, Sondheim says: "That's the kind of moment Angie understands exactly. Ethel never did."

We can't let Merman go: "She performed the hell out of the show when the critics were there. Or if she thought there was a celebrity in the audience. So we used to spread a rumor that Frank Sinatra was out front. That whoever, Judy Garland was out front." Josh Logan, who had directed Merman in "Annie Get Your Gun," warned Sondheim that Merman could become mechanical, but "I was smug enough to think, Well, 'Gypsy,' compared to 'Annie,' is one of the great roles, it's great literature, blah blah blah blah. And of course she did exactly to us what she'd done to 'Annie.'

"I'll tell you one thing she did do, she steadily upstaged everybody. Every night, she would be about one more foot upstage, so finally they were all playing with their backs to the audience. I don't think it was conscious. Ethel was not big on brains. But she sure knew her way around a stage, and it was all instinctive." - Frank Rich, New York Times

Updated On: 10/16/06 at 01:06 PM

This musical makes me squeal like a little school girl. Loves it!

I love the Merman cd. I have it. I just never considered her a great actress. She was sort of a larger than live presence. I like her voice a lot. However, I also get what Sondheim is saying. He was the author or the lyric and he had the idea, while writing it, of how it should be performed. When I listen to Mermans "Rose's Turn" I hear a terrific belt but not much heart. Not a lot of sorrow. You get that sense with Lansbury and with the other Rose's I've actually seen live.

Double Post

Updated On: 10/16/06 at 03:42 PM

i was in that show in 5th grade...i was baby louise.
(at our community theatre)