| This Gypsy is almost a play with music (SPOILERS) | |
| Last Edit: mikem 10:35 am EST 12/14/24 | |
| Posted by: mikem 10:33 am EST 12/14/24 | |
| In reply to: re: Gypsy - Audra’s (Epic) Turn - Roman 10:03 pm EST 12/13/24 | |
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| SPOILERS Roman, I agree completely with what you have said. This is the fifth production of Gypsy that I've seen, and I have never seen Rose performed with so much shading and complexity as I saw with Audra McDonald. Her portrayal of Rose is fearless. Her Rose is really a monster in many ways. She uses and discards people over and over again. Except for brief flashes in places like "Together," she doesn't even seem to care about her kids one iota except how they affect her, although she would deny that to the hilt if you said that to her. But even though she's a monster, she is not a caricature. We are used to characters in Golden Age musicals being outsized and larger than life. Audra's Rose is magnetic and compelling and dominates the stage, but she is not larger than life. She's all too recognizably human. She's a complex, three-dimensional human being whom any of us could meet on the street tomorrow. And obviously, Audra can hit the notes, but she's not focusing on the notes. She's focused on the lyrics and what the lyrics are telling us about the character. It feels like the quality of the notes is an afterthought to her and George C Wolfe. So, no, this Rose doesn't sound like any other Rose you've heard. And that takes some adjustment. Gypsy is one of the greatest musicals of all time, but the song melodies here are secondary to the lyrics and the story. We are used to Gypsy being presented as "It's a musical! We love musicals!" I never thought I'd see a production of Gypsy that feels like a play with music, but that's what it felt like here to me. It felt like we could throw away half the songs and it would have been just fine. Although Audra is fantastic, I had significant issues with several aspects of this production. Partially because Audra is so compelling, Herbie and Louise feel much more like secondary characters than I've ever felt before. The choreography for Tulsa doesn't seem to show him dancing with an unseen partner when that time comes. And I don't understand the approach to many aspects of the Strip number. Is Louise supposed to be wearing a skin-colored bodysuit in the world of the show as she's stripping? It doesn't make sense, but there are rhinestones that catch the light sewn into the part of the bodysuit overlying her abdomen. Are these supposed to be jewels attached to her naked skin? And there's a keyhole opening at the top of the back of the body suit, making it more obvious she's wearing one. But at the end of the number, when she takes off the shells covering her chest as she faces away from the audience, there seems to be an implication that she's now topless, even though audience members in the front orchestra can see the rhinestones and the body suit. And she's wearing the rhinestones at the supposed previous stop on the Strip journey. It's even more confusing because, for most of the Garden of Eden number, she's not stripping. I feel like Joy Woods is a bit lost in The Strip, but the direction and design are so muddled that I'm not surprised she's having trouble figuring out what she's supposed to be doing in this number. I did not understand the direction they went with the lamb at all. It's some weird animatronic lamb with weird movements that's completely unconvincing as a living animal, yet completely anachronistic as a robot lamb in this time period. Audra is working so hard to keep her character grounded in reality, and the lamb takes you completely out of reality. I was always impressed by Audra's gifts, but now I think there's nothing she can't do. She wants to play Sweeney Todd? Let her. The Phantom of the Opera? Alexander Hamilton? She would not only find a way to make it work, she would do it in a way that would make the audience leave thinking that was the way the character should have been portrayed all along. |
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