She's the mother of all stage mothers: Rose, a single mom hellbent on turning her two young daughters into stars during the waning days of vaudeville.But in the musical "Gypsy," she gets top billing.
Rosalind Russell played her in the 1962 movie; Bette Midler in the 1993 TV version; and on stage, where it all started, Rose has been played by some of Broadway's greats, including Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Bernadette Peters and Patti LuPone. And opening this week, six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald will take on one of musical theater's most demanding roles."It's a high gear the entire time," she said.
"And instead of someone sweeping me up in the tornado, I'm the tornado!"It's a part that's been compared to Shakespeare's King Lear.According to Erick Neher, cultural editor for the Hudson Review, "What Lear is to classical actors, that is what Rose is to musical theater.
It's the Everest.It's the summit.
It's an impossible role in a way, and yet every great musical theatre actress wants to test herself with it."McDonald said, "Everest is there for a reason.People want to climb it, right? I mean, it's there because it's majestic and it's incredible, and people are like, 'I want to figure out if I can get up there.' And that's what I'm trying to do."The musical was inspired by the memoir of Gypsy Rose Lee, one of the world's most famous striptease artists.
But the musical's creators, including writer Arthur Laurents, weren't interested in telling her story.Neher said, "The really interesting thing about the show 'Gypsy' is that it's not really about Gypsy Rose Lee or even her sister June, who became a very well-known actress, June Havoc.
It's about their mother, a tyrannical, insane, fabulous woman who pushed these two young girls onto the stage."It's Rose who volunteers her older daughter to perform a striptease for the first time.Were audiences shocked by the idea of a mother who would push her daughter to basically become a stripper? "It's...