Is the vote between Audra and Nicole a choice of tradition vs avant garde?
Is the vote between Audra and Nicole a choice of tradition vs avant garde?
#1Is the vote between Audra and Nicole a choice of tradition vs avant garde?
Posted: 6/7/25 at 10:51am
Take a legendary Director - Angels and America, Caroline or Change - out of retirement to direct Broadway's current biggest star and most Tony Award winning actor ever in a legendary 1950s Sondheim/Laurents/Styne show. Even the vocal timbre of the actress is grounded in techniques from the 18th century. Create the most complex version of the show ever, with Audra's vocals powerfully navigating the score like a hurricane.
Take a scrappy British Director who had a strange vision that a former pop star could star in a radically re-conceived version of Sunset, a version of the show that actually makes it 'cool', in a dystopic bleak world with sharp edges and abstract patterns but an orchestra as loud an electronic night club and Nicole's stunning, one-in-a-million vocal that is like a combination of Whitney Houston with Judy Garland.
Both of these performances should have Tony Awards. Can we just have a tie?
"You can't overrate Bernadette Peters. She is such a genius. There's a moment in "Too Many Mornings" and Bernadette doing 'I wore green the last time' - It's a voice that is just already given up - it is so sorrowful. Tragic. You can see from that moment the show is going to be headed into such dark territory and it hinges on this tiny throwaway moment of the voice." - Ben Brantley (2022)
"Bernadette's whole, stunning performance [as Rose in Gypsy] galvanized the actors capable of letting loose with her. Bernadette's Rose did take its rightful place, but too late, and unseen by too many who should have seen it" Arthur Laurents (2009)
"Sondheim's own favorite star performances? [Bernadette] Peters in ''Sunday in the Park,'' Lansbury in ''Sweeney Todd'' and ''obviously, Ethel was thrilling in 'Gypsy.'' Nytimes, 2000
#2Is the vote between Audra and Nicole a choice of tradition vs avant garde?
Posted: 6/7/25 at 11:29am
I give it to Nicole. Any other year, it would be Audra. But I’m steadfast that original/novel concepts are to be given their due this year and, Audra’s performance aside, GYPSY is nothing special from a conceptual standpoint.
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