Stritch was almost Rose in GYPSY?- Page 2

[Dollypop]

Posted: 9/12/11 at 8:53pm

Don't you start ragging about Loretta Swit. She's the hope of Broadway's future. She has a musical version of OH DAD, POOR DAD... in the works and she'll dazzle you with her brilliance. Mark my words!

Updated On: 9/12/11 at 08:53 PM

[theeatah]

Posted: 9/12/11 at 9:30pm

I remember reading that perhaps the producers realised she couldn't sing it...

After all, Lansbury was replaced by Dolores Gray. Apparently, Gray could be "difficult", like Stritch, but she possessed a far greater voice.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 9/13/11 at 5:11am

If you're talking about Lansbury in GYPSY, no her tempos weren't increased because she couldn't sing the show more slowly. She sang slower tempos in London (and on the album).

All the tempos were increased when Milton Rosenstock took over the show during the pre-Broadway tryout. Fritz Holt (the stage manager in NYC, director when they remounted the show in Florida where I worked) told me they just found the show worked better that way. Frankly, I didn't notice how uptempo it was until I recently found an old clip on You Tube. Maybe it was a 70s thing.

(FWIW I assume we'll all agree that Dolores Grey is more of a true "singer" than Lansbury. Some of the cast members of the Lansbury production had done Papermill with Grey; they said Grey sounded fine, but there was no comparison in terms of acting. I stand by my remark on Lansbury in the role, but I'd be the first to admit it was great because of her acting and general musicality, not her voice.)
Updated On: 9/13/11 at 05:11 AM

[ComingUpRoses2]

Posted: 9/13/11 at 8:08am

I think the ending of Rose's Turn, at least the way Angela played it, works better uptempo. There's a kind of madness and desperation to it that I like.

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/13/11 at 8:28am

I hate the manic Lansbury tempos in the clips I've seen. It's a cheap way of achieving dramatic intensity by barreling through (and ruining the musicality of) this fine score.

I love the music to Gypsy and the role of Rose, but I can't understand why so many theatre artists want to "ham" it to death, inflating it to Godzilla proportions.

It's to Lansbury's credit that she didn't overact it (as far as I can see), even if her musical director tried his best to do the job for her.

Updated On: 9/13/11 at 08:28 AM

[Gypsy9]

Posted: 9/13/11 at 8:55am

gaveston: I was comparing Lansbury's London performance with her NYC performance of "Rose's Turn". I am aware that among other attributes it is an angry song. But Lansbury's NYC take on that song, unlike her London version, went ballistic at the performance that I attended. It was, frankly, embarrassing. She was fine in the rest of the show.

[Gothampc]

Posted: 9/13/11 at 10:20am

Let's be honest. Stritch couldn't do this.

What's interesting about Lansbury's performance is that it's almost like there's a "British musical hall" aspect to her performance.
Link

[Gothampc]

Posted: 9/13/11 at 10:23am

Gypsy9, do you remember where in the theater you were sitting?

I think this revival played the Wintergarden and that's a difficult theater to project a characterization all the way to the rafters. Do you think Lansbury was just pushing the characterization to reach the people in the cheap seats?

[Gypsy9]

Posted: 9/13/11 at 12:12pm

It did play the Winter Garden and I had a decent seat in the orchestra. In London my seat was in the front first balcony. I think that it is possible that the great Arthur Laurents wanted to be sure that the NYC audience got the idea that Rose was really going mad in her final number and instructed Lansbury to "give it all you've got"! I still considered it overkill and it actually pained me to see such a fine actress seemingly compromising her performance. As I have already said, Lansbury was fine in the rest of her performance at the Winter Garden.

Incidentally, I went around to the stage door at the Picadilly Theatre in London back in 1973 and I was the only one there(!) and we had a short chat. Lansbury was charming. I told her that I had recently been on jury duty with her brother, producer Edgar Lansbury, and she seemed genuinely interested.

[best12bars]

Posted: 9/13/11 at 12:28pm

^ I love reading your stories about this, Gypsy9. So great that you were there and got to see both Merman and Lansbury play Rose. Your accounts are very insightful.

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 9/13/11 at 12:38pm

^ Hear hear!

[ComingUpRoses2]

Posted: 9/13/11 at 1:04pm

From the clip that was just posted, I don't think Angela overdoes it at all. In fact, she seems to be one of the few who have been able to showcase Rose's madness without completely hamming it up and making me feel embarrassed while watching them. I feel Patti and Bette were the two worst offenders of that! Not to offend anyone, as I usually enjoy them in some of their other performances, but they looked like they were starring in a bad high school production of the show.

Considering Laurents directed Patti in NYC, too, so it wouldn't surprise me if he told Angela to take it over the top for that production. I don't remember Tyne's performance of that number being terribly over the top at the end, though, and Laurents directed that production, too. I remember her being the raunchiest of the Rose's and really selling the burlesque portion during the first half of the song.

I'd sort of like my ideal Rose to be funny/sexy during the first part, tragic/heartbreaking during the second part, and bringing the psycho in the last part. Most Roses just stumble through the song like a drunken psycho. It's sort of annoying. There's no build. It just doesn't make sense to me at all. I don't know why so many people choose to play it angry for the entire run time without any nuances at all. Anyway...there's my rant. Sorry.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 9/13/11 at 6:26pm

Gypsy9, now that I've refreshed my memory with various You Tube clips, "Rose's Turn" is the only number that seems to be radically faster. Holt did say they "saved" the show by increasing tempos pre-Broadway, but he was talking about everything including the overture, not just that final, manic "Turn."

It's been 40 years of course, but I don't remember Lansbury seeming anywhere near that frenzied. My memory (and I saw all 32 performances we did in Florida AFTER the Bway run) was that she was brilliant, but not rushed. And the famous "silent bow" Laurents gave her for after the applause was one of the most chilling things I've seen on a stage.

I think the theory that Laurents was directing her to be more frenzied makes more sense than that the size of the Winter Garden was the problem. The lady has amazing technique. (But she's also no pushover when it comes to artistic decisions. Laurents may have demanded something, but I doubt it happened unless Angie agreed to it. And she was almost always right, so maybe this choice was the exception.)

In 1976, after she closed the Broadway production, she did a summer tour of MAME; then we recreated the New York production of GYPSY in Ft. Lauderdale and Miami under the direction of Fritz Holt and with most of the same cast (except for a new Herbie and Louise).

The Lauderdale theater had 1200 seats; the Miami theater had more than 3,000. Lansbury made the adjustment with no apparent effort whatsoever (while the rest of the cast ran around as if on fire for that first tech rehearsal in the larger space). I seriously doubt she had a problem with the Winter Garden.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 9/13/11 at 6:27pm

Duplication due to error message. Updated On: 9/13/11 at 06:27 PM