BWW Reviews: GYPSY Brings Soap-Opera Sheen to Classic Musical at CLO

There are those who say Gypsy is the finest of Sondheim musicals (though Jule Styne wrote the music, and Sondheim supplied just the lyrics). There are even many who say it is the finest of all musicals, bar none. While I would have to argue that it's a great musical but not the greatest (it's a little music-light in Act 2, and "Mr. Goldstone" is a one-joke number for a character who has no lines and never appears again), Gypsy is still a juggernaut, revived on Broadway and elsewhere with a consistency that rivals Shakespeare for its omnipresence. Naturally, it was the perfect fit for Pittsburgh CLO's traditionally starry summer season. Charles Repole's production delivers, as expected, but the whole is a little less than the sum of its parts.

As everyone knows- well, everyone who would be reading BroadwayWorld anyway, the show tells the story of Rose Hovick (Kim Zimmer), a thrice-divorced Seattle hausfrau desperate to make stars of her daughter June (Lucia Williams, and later Mallory Michaellann), who has little talent, and Louise (Felicia Niebel, and later Amanda Rose), who has none. She enlists the help of their agent Herbie (Robert Newman), who is madly in love with Rose, to try and bring them to the top. It's not a spoiler to say it doesn't work, and only when formerly-neglected daughter Louise reinvents herself as Gypsy Rose Lee, stripper-cum-sophisticate, does Rose finally achieve the vicarious stardom she's always dreamed of, at the cost of losing the rest of her family in the process.

Amanda Rose's performance as Louise is pitch-perfect, capturing the awkwardness and lack of grace of the nascent vaudeville performer that slowly blossoms into the Gypsy Rose Lee persona. Her final incarnation as the tongue-in-cheek sex symbol has Marilyn Monroe's tongue-in-cheek sexuality, but with a healthy dose of nerd appeal, thanks to her witty and self-effacing banter. It's safe to say that if Amanda Rose's Gypsy Rose Lee was a star today, she'd be an internet darling.

The real star attraction in this production, according to the advertising and billing, is the famous soap-opera duo, Robert Newman and Kim Zimmer, as Herbie and Rose. These long-time co-stars have genuine chemistry together, and the audience (who were mostly older women, outspoken soap opera devotees, at the performance I attended) eat them up. But, in a way, their chemistry and rapport is one of the things wrong with the production. There is too much familiarity, too much intimacy, in their portrayal of the notoriously dysfunctional Rose-and-Herbie relationship. "Mama Rose," as she is never called in the script, but is universally, mimetically known, is a notoriously difficult role for actresses on the musical stage, as is Herbie. This is a man who is rendered a perpetual pushover by his fiancee but is treated in-universe as a troubled man with a rage problem, and this is a woman with a devotion to the arts that borders on the psychotic, who is alternately referred to as a smothering mother and as a sociopath by the characters she encounters. Zimmer's Rose clearly has her blinders on, but she comes across more as pathetic than as monstrous. We pity her for her delusion that she and the act are great, but we rarely fear her. Zimmer sings well, and acts well, but her Rose errs too close to the side of caution on the scale of sympathetic Roses (Bernadette Peters) to monstrous roses (Angela Lansbury). Similarly, there is little threat, either of leaving, or of explosion, in Robert Newman's Herbie. He and Zimmer bicker more like an old married couple than they fight like a time bomb finally exploding. Their sense of stasis makes it hard to buy Rose as the same woman who affably kidnaps several small children in the opening scene.

Luckily, what the Hovick family lacks in chaotic energy, the rest of the cast amply provides. Playwright Arthur Laurents's structure leaves the supporting cast as a set of glorified cameos by necessity, with Rose and Herbie, and later Louise, as the only constants. But as the varied characters pass through the story, most of them leave stronger, more vivid impressions than the more dramatically grounded leads. Felicia Niebel and Lucia Williams are endearingly awful as Rose's preteen daughters, performing their hearts out in Jule Styne's intentionally-horrible vaudeville numbers. (Here, I must congratulate Repole and his choreographer Michael Lichtefeld for effectively conveying that Rose's songs and choreography are awful, and her performers untalented, but never letting the audience believe that the actors onstage are talentless themselves.) Zach Trimmer milks his song-and-dance routine as Tulsa, and Mallory Michaelann's grown-up June doubles the hideousness of the younger one's guileless performance, then breaks hearts when she drops the charade in private.

But if the overall feel of the show is a little safe, sanitized and soapish, it's the trio of strippers in Act 2 that give the show a much-needed shot in the arm. When Susan Cella makes her entrance in butterfly dress and tassels as washed-up old broad Tessie Tura, the show finally develops a rhythm. Her raunchy exchanges with the deliriously strung-out Electra (Ruth Pferdehirt and sassy Mazeppa (Amma Osei) deliver punchline after punchline, and their trio in "You Gotta Get A Gimmick" is hilarious in its unabashed vulgarity. Osei may have the smallest role as Mazeppa, the trumpet playing stripper, but her bluesy riffs and insane belt on the down-and-dirty jazz tune give the number something it's never had before. Though some may dismiss it as the old theatrical cliche of "let a big black lady stop the show" when Act 2 runs long and slow, Osei's delivery is completely believable- after all, wouldn't a jazz and blues singer have wound up in burlesque around this time period anyway? (Plus, even if you've seen the show before, you won't believe what THIS Mazeppa does with the trumpet.)

It's impossible to have a bad production of Gypsy, because the material is so solid. This isn't a bad production, or even a mediocre one. It's quite good. But sometimes, a production like this can feel like a museum piece, bringing too little new to a show that is on the verge of being overdone already. Fans of high-energy and broad comedy maybe more satisfied by The Wedding Singer later this month, but for devotees of classic musical theatre- or soap opera fans- it's hard to beat even a slightly superfluous production of this timeless piece. Curtain up, light the lights: once again, everything is coming up Roses.

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