Which Rose Did You Vote For in the Poll?

There's a poll on the main page. Who did you vote for as your fav Rose?

I voted for Bernadette (as if you couldn't tell hehe)

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I voted for Bernadette, and I left a message.

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Bernadette!!! She is the best and I can't wait to see it again!

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How come Betty Buckly and Linda Lavin weren't included on the poll? Not that I would have voted for them, but they did play the part and should have been included.

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Bette Midler

with Bernie's dissappointed reviews I don't see how she's number one!...?

Disappointed reviews?

Variety put the tally for Bernadette as mostly positive. Something like nine favorable to five unfavorable, if I remember correctly. And Bernadette's raves were in the right places, including the New York Times, New York, AP, The New Yorker, Newsweek and USA Today, among many others.

There's one thing constant about Gypsy productions post-Merman. Opinion has always been divisive...some loved Lansbury's madness, some found her too shrill. Some loved Tyne Daly's fierce portrayal, others were let down by Daly's vocals. Lavin received mostly negative reviews, but had a couple of fierce supporters. Buckley got a lot of great reviews, I recall, but some reviewers felt she let down the comedy.

Bernadette's reviews were business as usual, with most weighing in the pro camp.

I dont think its out of print. I went to two places and they both had it one being Blockbuster. You can't tell by the cd alone. Personally, I thought Bette Midler was playing well, Bette Midler NOT Mama Rose yet she wasnt that bad. Probably a 7.5 out of 10 while Bernadette was an 11 out of 10!

there is no comparison.bernadette didn't have half the power on everthings coming up roses or roses turn that angela did.a brillant performance

The Merm is the only Rose, the rest merely petals.


Yours for Belter Broadway!

While I haven't seen all of the Rose's, I think that Tyne Daly was underrated. She doesn't have a good voice, but there is a lot of character development in her singing througout the CD and also in the way she has chosen to pronounce certain words. Didn't see Lansbury or Merman so I can't really say about them, but I was impressed with Tyne.

Ok....I voted for Merm based on the CD only.

I'm fully prepared to get beat down because someone's going to take this in a way that it wasn't intended, but someone please explain to me why and when in the show Peters was good. No, I'm not trying to be witchy there. I literally couldn't see it. I always felt like she was trying too hard to please the director, the writers, the producers, the fans....and she never made it to just being Rose. I'm just wondering where other people were able to see it that I was not. Honest question. (Really, I do want to like her. I just coudln't for some reason.)

To Chasing Rainbows

I believed Bernadette Peters from the get-go.

ACT ONE
I like her aggressive busybody approach in the Uncle Jocko scene, that suddenly turns icily nasty when she accuses Jocko of fixing the contest. She makes an excellent choice in the scene with Baby Louise in Pop's house, cavalierly dismissing Baby Louise, with a snap with "You know how high strung the baby is after a performance"...but then realizing she has to give her other daughter some sort of encouragement, warming up on the line, "You are a good girl and I was proud of you" etc. I like her pacing like an animal in a cage in the "Some People" scene and her stalking to the front of the stage at the end of that number. I like the playfulness and sexiness she brings to "Small World" and her seduction of Herbie. The addition of Rose offstage in "Baby June and Her Newsboys" makes you realize you are watching the grown up Baby June that never was, a new dimension for that scene. I like the outrageousness and hairpin turns she takes with the comedy in the "Mr. Goldstone" scene. I like the way she plays "You'll Never Get Away From Me" like Herbie is going to walk out any minute and she knows she has to turn on everything she's got to keep him entranced. Her scene with Cratchitt is the scariest and most unbalanced of any Rose I've seen (Russell, Midler, Daly, Buckley) or heard (Merman on tape). She's great in the scene preceding "Everything's Coming Up Roses," particularly the slow, deliberate tearing of June's note and the fever pitch of her delivery of the number.

ACT TWO
She's sweet and warm in "Together," when she is trying with everything she's got to hold her "family" together, but she's oddly cold with Agnes/Amanda, like she can barely stand to look at her, a choice I found very interesting, and an approach I've never seen before. You can see the color drain from her face when she feels like she's going to be trapped in a domestic life at the conclusion of the act's two week run at the burlesque house and then again when Herbie walks out and her prospects fade away. You see her crack for a moment, but then she pulls herself together, once again with a steeliness when Louise enters in the gown. I love her delivery of "Let me DO something dammit!" in the Minsky's scene, and the power plays between her and Tammy throughout the scene, that I feel are very finely calibrated. Finally, "Rose's Turn" just has more going on in it than most any "Rose's Turn" I've seen. I read her performance in this scene as a woman who can't help making the terrible choices that have destroyed her life.

(In another thread, I defended the Merman recording when someone carped about it, and I think it's a wonderful recording and think Merman had to have been the definitive Rose, given how the part is so tailored to her talents, but I have to confess, when I listen to her "Rose's Turn," I don't feel much of anything, apart from admiring the singing. I guess I'd like her to crack a little more, but Merman seems almost TOO strong in that number. The little catch they added from one of Merman's takes in the new CD release on the line "Give 'em love and what does it get you?" helps a lot).

Bernadette has other virtues in my mind. She's a sexy Rose, and it finally makes the relationship with Herbie understandable. (What sexual thrall could Tyne Daly or Bette Midler really have over their respective Herbies?)

She's believeable as someone who really could have been a star had she had the opportunities. Plus, given her cutesy-pie image, she also has grown-up Baby June correllary going on. Baby June, for that matter, is entirely believable as the daughter of this Rose, another aspect that Bernadette brings by her very image.

With 40+ years on stage, Bernadette knows her way around a joke, and even how to properly set up jokes for others. (She feeds Tessie Tura her laugh lines perfectly).

And while Buckley might be my favorite Rose vocally, Bernadette (now that that infection that plagued her during previews and after opening is long out of her system), sings the score beautifully. Some of the altered keys in the Lansbury recording rub me the wrong way, and Daly who I loved in the theatre, didn't work as well on the recording.

I appreciated Bernadette's more vulnerable, more feminine Rose, compared to the borderline misogynistic approach of some other Roses. As Brantley pointed out, the thrills in her performance fall in different places in this Gypsy. It may be why some people can't or don't accept her in the role. I was glad to see a different approach to the character of Rose, and to see Rose as a real woman, rather than the usual calculating monster.

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Updated On: 8/1/03 at 06:22 PM