23/12/2024
"Though placed in a musical comedy setting—with bright, brassy songs by Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim, and an airtight script by Arthur Laurents—Rose is a role with the tragic scale, if not the body count, of King Lear or Medea. And here’s where I must doubt my original premise, that McDonald, great as she is, has somehow changed 'Gypsy.' Instead I think this 1959 musical is the kind of masterpiece that raises the bar for everyone involved, and McDonald is the kind of performer, on par with many previous Roses (Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Bernadette Peters, Patti LuPone), who doesn’t just clear that bar but leaves it in the dust. This is a show that requires and rewards the best of its interpreters, and which feels new and fresh, indeed transformed, when it is realized this fully." - Rob Weinert-Kendt
Audra McDonald, our greatest living musical theater actor, transforms the role of Momma Rose in a stunning new revival of “Gypsy.”
