Gypsy with Patti Lupone — Page 2

I didn't say anything about her carnegie Hall concert not being recorded. I don't know what you are talking about.

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Wait, is the Carnegie Hall concert you guys are talking about the "Sondheim, etc." recording where she sings "Some People" (and kills me dead with her rendition of "Being Alive", as a sidenote)?

I think you're confused Yankeefan. No one's talking about the CD. There had been plans to FILM the GYPSY revival and then release it to the DVD market. Everything was in place until Laurents vetoed the project for unspecified reasons (I know he didn't like Mendes' staging of the revival; not sure what he ultimately thought about Peters' performance).

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Wow! I honestly had no idea all this happened way back when. Thats really interesting.

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Well, it took "so long" because Peters opted to do the Annie Get Your Gun revival first, which she did for nearly two years.

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I think the original GYPSY movie is far from awful. It is far better than the dull Midler version.

Roz acted the hell out of the role, and Natalie Wood was dazzling. It also followed the stage show quite good.

Updated On: 3/9/06 at 09:52 PM

Merman's shadow was just too huge when the film came out and for the creative team and most fans of the show she WAS Rose. In hindsight, perhaps it'd have been better for Freddie Brisson to have passed on getting the role for his wife Russell (or she should have done what Cary Grant did when he was offered the role of Higgins in My Fair Lady and insist they cast the original star).

The press Russell got was terrible and no one ever gave her performance a chance. Only in recent years, those of us too young to have seen Merman -- and grew up knowing the Lansbury, Midler, Daly, and now Peters versions -- are able to view the film on its own terms. As such, I think her acting is good, if perhaps a bit too Auntie Mame-esque. Her singing (partly dubbed by Lisa Kirk) is obviously very limited. But the film has its moments. Nevertheless, it's still hard not to wonder what might have been with Merman, preserving what many consider the single greatest performance in the history of musical theater. No wonder so many are bitter about the film -- it could have been legendary.

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Updated On: 3/9/06 at 10:09 PM

It will be interesting to see what types of things happen with his properties when Arthur Laurents dies. It's not just LuPone, or Sam Mendes' direction of GYPSY he's taken issue with. In the last decade, he's gone to town on just about everything and everyone who has performed his works. With all due respect, perhaps there IS some senility or mental instability thats come on with old age.

GYPSY, though, seems to be his sore spot (or his source of ultimate control) - he's hyper protective of it and has vetoed numerous productions in London and Toronto.

My guess is that if she's a triumph at Ravinia, LuPone could possibly do GYPSY sometime in London. They are over due for a revival there big time...

And I find it amazing how well Kirk matched Russell's voice - though you can definitely tell when Kirk starts singing.

I think they did a terrible job of matching the voices; it’s much too jarring and obvious when Lisa Kirk’s voice comes in. That said, I still prefer Rosalind Russell’s performance to Bette Midler’s (and I love Natalie Wood as Louise).

I'd love to see a completely revamped version of HALLELUJAH BABY one of these days after he's gone. I took the train down to DC to see the Arena Stage revival of it a couple of years ago. Laurents, of course, was directing and had reportedly done a major rewrite of the book (I saw him standing in the back of the theatre with a legal pad barking orders at intermission). He had publicly stated he wanted the show to move to Broadway after DC and by intermission, it was clear to me that the show wasn't going to go anywhere. What a mess. The book had a fascinating conceit -- tell the evolving story of the African-American experience over the course of the 20th century, through the lives of several principal characters (black and white) who never age. The story and Styne's score went from the blues and minstrelry of the teens and 20s to the jazz and pop of the 20s to 40s, to the r&b sounds of the 50s and 60s. Really fascinating. And in Laurents hands it was a naive, patronizing (at times borderline offensive, especially in the early sections that had a few "feets do yo' stuff" moments -- lots of people walked out at intermission) view of "black plight" teeming with quasi-good intentions and white liberal guilt. I HATED it and so did much of the audience from the comments I overheard. Lots of people were downright angry. And it's a damn shame because the score from Jules Styne and Comden and Green has a lot of great music in it.

For the show to ever have a chance at being revived and entering the canon of musicals that get performed regularly around the country, the book has to be tossed out entirely -- something Laurents would never allow while there's still breath in his body. The concept is an intersting one and might work with say, George Wolfe taking a crack at writing a new book (he'd be an ideal director for it as well). But that will never happen until after Laurents' death.

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Updated On: 3/9/06 at 10:46 PM

Not to completely go off-topic, but I believed Judy Garland also campaigned to play the part of Mama Rose in the film, but wasn't cast because they couldn't get insurance for her.

Imagine the Gypsy film with Judy and Wood. That would have been amazing.

-d5johnston

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I think that Garland/Minnelli GYPSY rumour has been given way too much credence over the years. My guess is that it has pretty much always been a "wouldn't-it-have-been-amazing" scenario created by show queens

The story is that it "would" have been a television production around 1966. But it doesn't really hold water, because it's incredibly unlikely that a television film would have been made just a few years after the film was released (and bombed).

The other GYPSY film legend was that Streisand was going to star in a remake in the 80s with Madonna as Louise.

Updated On: 3/10/06 at 01:43 AM