Tovah Feldshuh Will Play Rose in GYPSY

[somethingwicked]

Posted: 4/12/11 at 5:49pm

Interesting.

"Four-time Tony Award nominee Tovah Feldshuh will climb the Everest of musical theatre this fall, playing Mama Rose in Gypsy at Bristol Riverside Theatre. The Bucks County, PA, theatre announced its 2011-12 season on April 12.

A new play by Jon Marans (The Temperamentals) will premiere at BRT in the coming year.

Feldshuh, who earned Tony nominations for Golda's Balcony (2004), Lend Me a Tenor (1989), Saravà (1979) and Yentl (1976), is a Drama Desk Award winner for Yentl, Lend Me a Tenor and Golda's Balcony. Her most recent Broadway appearance was in 2009's Irena's Vow.

She's no stranger to musicals, having appeared in the Broadway musicals Saravà and Rodgers & Hart, plus the title role in Hello, Dolly! for Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey. She's also sung in her self-titled one-woman shows Off-Broadway. In February and March, she appeared with Betty Buckley in Arsenic and Old Lace at Dallas Theatre Center..."

http://www.playbill.com/news/article/149801

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 4/12/11 at 5:54pm

uh......

[Dollypop]

Posted: 4/12/11 at 6:05pm

If her Mama Rose is anything like her Dolly Levi, all I can say is "Heaven Forfend!"

[bwayfan7000]

Posted: 4/12/11 at 6:07pm

That Streisand woman is gonna be furious!

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/12/11 at 6:09pm

I am so there. I can't wait for this disaster. *pops popcorn*

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 4/12/11 at 6:10pm

Uh......

[bwayfan7000]

Posted: 4/12/11 at 6:17pm

Care to elaborate, Jordan?

And this is just at a small regional theatre, no? Even if it's completely horrid, no one's going to notice...

[best12bars]

Posted: 4/12/11 at 6:26pm

I love the idea of two Yentl's playing Rose on stage and screen.

[egghumor]

Posted: 4/12/11 at 6:37pm

I saw Tovah Feldshuh in “Sarava,” a cheap misguided mess in which she rose above the material and production to give a truly wonderful performance, and with an excellent singing voice as well. Despite the show's deservedly laughable reputation, she was nominated for Tony, and rightly so. Thinking about it now, it seems a lot like what I'm hearing these days about Beth Leavel in “Baby, It's You.”

Anyway, in many productions Feldshuh has proven herself a fine actress. However when I heard her take on Dolly Levi as a Irish potato famine survivor (or something along those lines), I cringed – and it seems many others who actually saw it did too.

According to the Wikipedia entry on Rose Novick: “In later life, Rose had opened a lesbian boardinghouse in a ten-room apartment on West End Avenue in New York City. This property and a farm in Highland Mills, New York, had been rented for Mother Rose by Gypsy Lee. Rose shot and killed one of her guests (according to Erik Preminger, she killed her own lover, who had made a pass at Gypsy) at the boardinghouse. This incident was explained as a suicide.”

Oy. Don't let Tovah get a hold of that! Mama Rose as a closeted lesbian? Eek! Not only was she the uber-stage mother-monster, but in Feldshuh's hands she might become the butch-dyke-uber-stage-mother-monster.

[aasjb4ever]

Posted: 4/12/11 at 6:50pm

For $15, I'm totally seeing that. Hell it's only 20 minutes from where I live, so what if it sucks?

[egghumor]

Posted: 4/12/11 at 7:18pm

"So what if it sucks?"

Yeah, this one might suck a dildo.

[Dollypop]

Posted: 4/12/11 at 7:21pm

Yes, Tovah played Dolly with an Irish brogue, but other wonderful Dollys have done the same. It was when she quoted her late husband, Ephraim Levi, that she assumed a Jimmy Cagney-like voice. It was horribly wrong because Ephraim was Viennese and would have had an accent that was closer to German. Obviously the reason the Harmonia Gardens was the favorite restaurant of Dolly and Ephraim Levi. Rudolph, the headwaiter, speaks with a German accent and (in the original production) the waiters wore the longer German/Austrian style aprons. It was probably an elegant German/Austrian eatery.

Tovah just didn't prepare carefully enough for her role.

[best12bars]

Posted: 4/12/11 at 7:26pm

But will she play Rose as a wannabe goy?

Inquiring minds want to know.