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jeanmd
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6/4/2001 | posted: 5/27/2003 at 5:07:25 PM ET
Not sure if anyone has read the Variety review, or if it had been discussed when the show opened. The last sentence was so thought-provoking that I thought I'd repeat it :
"The performance may not be the triumph we'd hoped for, but it's easy to forgive an actress's reluctance to play her mother as a monster."
Food for thought, eh??
J
Edit: the post after Moljul's is the very long review.
J (5:32p)
|  moljul
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4/2/2001
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New York
Fav. BP CD: I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
Fav. BP Song: Dublin Lady
| posted: 5/27/2003 at 5:08:48 PM ET
are you able to post the entire review? I heard about it but was a day late getting to the newstand to pick it up.
| jeanmd
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6/4/2001 | posted: 5/27/2003 at 5:32:05 PM ET
"Somewhere in the massive trunk of theatrical wit and wisdom that is "Gypsy," there's a line for every showbiz occasion. For the highly anticipated new Broadway revival directed by Sam Mendes, it would be a paraphrase of a song title from the first act: All it needs is a Rose. Mendes' vivid and stylish production has a lot going for it, in fact almost everything except the one element this musical can't comfortably do without: a galvanizing performance in the central role. The controversial casting of the downy-soft Bernadette Peters as the flinty Mama Rose proves to be, as many had feared, a miscalculation that all this talented performer's hard work simply cannot overcome.
The choice of Peters was an acknowledged risk. Book writer Arthur Laurents, lyricist Stephen Sondheim and Mendes knew Peters' image and performing style didn't necessarily fit the standard for Mama Rose, the stage mother from hell who drives her daughters away in pursuit of a dream of stardom that she cannot bring herself to acknowledge as her own. The admirable idea was to seek out a new interpretation for this celebrated character, one of the great roles in the American musical canon: To accentuate her womanly qualities as opposed to her monstrous ones, to give us a more rounded, seductive, human-scaled Mama Rose.
Peters' naturally warm presence and period-perfect face certainly bring some intriguing new dimensions to the character. This Rose might indeed have made it big in showbiz if given the chance, and her baby-doll features hauntingly suggest the hopeful little girl inside the driven, disappointed woman. With Peters in the role, we can imagine that Baby June's cutie-pie persona has been synthesized to replicate the adorable child her mother probably once was. And Peters, as expected, plays up Rose's purring femininity, making Herbie's infatuation with her more understandable than it often is: Her kittenish performance of "Small World" is seductive indeed.
But it's really when Mama Rose is most monstrous that she's most compelling -- and, paradoxically, most human. Those chilling, character-defining scenes, in which Rose's determination to hound her daughters into stardom overrides a mother's loving instincts, tend to slip by in Peters' performance almost imperceptibly. The big moments register small. Peters bellows Rose's demands and objections in a nasal snarl as circumstances require, but there's somehow no conviction in her steeliness. The desperation and need that drive her are dutifully sketched in, suggested, but never made palpable. The performance has little emotional force.
Theater historians might point out that Ethel Merman, who created the role, wasn't exactly known for her expressive acting. (Didn't Sondheim himself famously disparage her as a "singing dog"?) Duse she wasn't. But subsequent interpreters of the role, notably Angela Lansbury and Tyne Daly on Broadway, have set the bar higher. And Merman, one assumes, had a powerful charisma that helped to compensate for any acting deficiencies. Peters is a more delicate presence, and while the actress is in fine vocal form, in her efforts to sell her big songs she often lapses into repetitive, generic Broadway gestures -- splayed hands stabbing at the sky -- that are aimed too squarely at wowing the audience.
Most audiences, of course, will be content to be wowed, and will find Peters' perfectly competent and freshly funny perf entirely satisfactory. In any case, the allure of "Gypsy" certainly does not all rest with Rose. Mendes has assembled a terrific supporting cast, led by Tammy Blanchard, best known for her Emmy-winning turn as the young Judy Garland in a 2001 ABC telepic, as a touching Louise. She is convincingly awkward and plain in the early scenes, blazingly beautiful when she shimmies through the long sequence in which this tentative teen struts her way to stardom on a series of burlesque stages.
In this thrillingly staged number, the miniature prosceniums that are a hallmark of Anthony Ward's inventive sets expand to fill the stage for the first time. Previously, Mendes had always shown us Mama Rose, visible in the wings, urging the girls on in their gradually decaying vaudeville routines. She was a constant presence, helping Baby June into a finale costume or chasing one of the boys' stray hats. Then, suddenly, once Gypsy achieves stardom, Rose is pushed offstage, erased from the picture.
In general, Mendes' production doesn't take notable liberties with the material, but provides an artful frame for it. The overriding metaphor is theatrical: A backstage set, lit with infinite nuance by Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer, surrounds every scene until Gypsy's apotheosis, underscoring the idea that for Rose and her troupers, the theater was the world and the world was the theater.
Those troupers include, first and foremost, star attraction Baby June. She is played, hilariously, like a yapping trained poodle in the early scenes by Heather Tepe, and later with a deliciously disgruntled edge by Kate Reinders, who whips out a cigarette from under her frilly frock in a moment of exasperation. David Burtka is an endearing, bright-eyed Tulsa; if his dancing in "All I Need Is the Girl" is not precisely virtuosic, Burtka makes up for it with his exuberance. John Dossett is an appealingly sincere Herbie with a palpably soft heart.
As the trio of strippers who instruct Louise in the fine art of the bump and grind, Kate Buddeke (a battle-ax Mazeppa), Heather Lee (a sweet-tempered Tessie Tura) and Julie Halston (a hilariously zonked Electra) just about stop the second act cold with "You Gotta Get a Gimmick." But then this is the rare Broadway score that is really unstoppable: the songs are like a string of perfect pearls, polished to a bright glow by music director Marvin Laird.
And yet accomplished and lively as the production is, it cannot do full justice to the material without a powerful performance in the central role. This "Gypsy" is an amiable and entertaining backstage comedy, but it doesn't evolve into an archetypal story about the universal human need to be loved, as the finest productions can. Mama Rose is a great character because she embodies, on a grand scale, the human hunger for the warmth of the spotlight -- any spotlight. That this hunger is instilled by the kind of emotional neglect Mama Rose also ladles out is the disorienting irony that gives the show its perpetual fascination.
Peters herself began performing as a child. She's spent a life on the emotional roller-coaster that is showbiz, and no doubt knows its pleasures and pains intimately. Her delivery of Rose's exhausted moment of revelation -- her bewildered admission that she "just wanted to be noticed" -- is deeply affecting, maybe her finest moment in the show. But there is a lot more to Rose than this poignant moment of recognition. In a fascinating profile recently in the New York Times, Peters talked about her early days on the road -- in a production of "Gypsy," yet -- and her very own Mama Rose. She was at pains to point out that her mother was cut from softer cloth. But perhaps Peters' inability to dig into the darker aspects of her character stems from a natural reticence about her own experience. The performance may not be the triumph we'd hoped for, but it's easy to forgive an actress's reluctance to play her mother as a monster."
Variety, 5/1/03
| moljul
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4/2/2001
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Fav. BP CD: I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
Fav. BP Song: Dublin Lady
| posted: 5/27/2003 at 6:04:42 PM ET
very interesting. Thanks Jean. I heard it was not terribly positive in relation to Bernadette but I always enjoy Variety's reviews because they are so well written and seem to really dig deep into the show - Flaws and all.
| Anonymous
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152.163.253.x | posted: 5/27/2003 at 10:33:49 PM ET
Interesting article..thanks for posting!
I personally found Ms. Peter's performance to be highly convincing. As for the author's argument (that Peters could not fully immerse herself in the darker elements of the character b/c of the similarities in her own personal life)I just dont buy it. Reluctance to demonize her own mother? Um last i checked there was a realm called acting and one entitled reality.
| Bwaybaby
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3/10/2001 | posted: 5/28/2003 at 12:11:59 AM ET
This is the thing that cracks me up the most--when people say " Rose was written to be played like...[insert comment here]...which is everything Bernadette is not" Meanwhile the two men who originally came up with the concept of Mama Rose ( in the context of the show) HAND PICKED Bernadette for the role. So who do you think knows more about how the role should be played...the critics or the writers and creators??
You will never have any two actresses playing a role the exact same way.....and thank Goodness for that! I personally think Bernadette makes Rose more human and more believable...less like an un-relatable, fictional character. She shows us the reasons why Rose acted the way she did. In other words...she just doesn't read the lines and play the part as a "mad woman". She shows us WHY Rose was a mad woman yet also very human. In reality,no one is ever one-dimensional and the fact that she is playing Rose's many sides is great. She shows us that Rose can be fierce, yet vulnerable. She can be hard yet act very coyly. Mama Rose does have a lot of hatred in her yet it stems from a sad part in her life in which she desperately wants to be loved. And I think the audience actually gets that from Bernadette's portrayal. One of the most incredible scenes in the show for me is when Herbie tells Rose that he is leaving. The look of vulnerability on Bernadette's face is heartbreaking and you expect Rose to break at that moment then all the sudden this fierce determination comes out of her and she becomes hauntingly scary! Yes, the book is fantastically written but it takes amazing talent to play a role like that and add so many layers to it. Its very hard to find that right balance...to make it interesting enough but to not take it over the top so much so that its completely not relatable for the audience(especially because this show is based on someone's real life). That is a hard balance to find in musical theatre when people are mostly going to get away from reality.
| jeanmd
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6/4/2001 | posted: 5/28/2003 at 4:42:21 AM ET
I SO agree with you, Bwaybaby. At intermission the last time I saw Gypsy, one woman said that she felt Rose to be a real person, and she would like to sit down with her over a coffee and discuss the children. Somehow that was quite a compliment in my eyes-that Bernadette has managed to make Rose a real, living, breathing, 3-dimensional person.
J
|  Krasm
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Registered:
3/29/2003
From:
Brooklyn | posted: 5/28/2003 at 12:31:11 PM ET
The woman sitting next to me at Gypsy last Saturday night cried so hard at "Everything's coming up Roses", that she almost was hyperventilating. While talking to her during the intermission, she explained to me that her mother pushed her as a kid into shows and commercials and that Bernadette was so real that she felt like her own mother was on stage.
After the curtain call she looked over at me and said "What a wonderful experience this has been for me"
"To each his Dulcinea
That he alone can name..."
| Bwaybaby
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3/10/2001 | posted: 5/28/2003 at 6:08:07 PM ET
There are two things, other than having an incredible voice, that I think makes Bernadette so unbelievably talented. One is connecting with the audience. She knows how to draw an audience in and make them feel what her character is feeling. She doesn't necessarily play to an audience.She plays FOR the audience and I think there is a big difference. She doesn't make you feel like you are watching something on TV that you are completely disconnected from...she makes the audience feel like they are almost a part of everything. That is very important when you are in such a big theatre too. And she knows the perfect time to acknowledge the audience and when not to.
And secondly, her line deliveries. I think you could give her any line and she could turn it into the most meaningful thing you've ever heard LOL She doesn't make it sound like she is saying something that was written in a script...she makes it come to life.What really amazes me is how she can make an audience come to a realization they never came to before or see something in a whole new way just by how she says something. Like, " I was born to soon and I began too late" or the way she says " don't be like June". I also love how she takes full advantage of her vocal range for her speaking lines as well as her singing. Not many performers really utilize that. An example would be when she says " there's egg roll, aint there". She obviously puts a lot of thought and emotion into every single syllable. Its even harder to be a convincing actor and sing at the same time...not that many performers can do it flawlessly, but I believe she can. Its equally amazing how much emotion she can convey without using words.
The writer of the Variety article stated:
"But it's really when Mama Rose is most monstrous that she's most compelling -- and, paradoxically, most human. Those chilling, character-defining scenes, in which Rose's determination to hound her daughters into stardom overrides a mother's loving instincts, tend to slip by in Peters' performance almost imperceptibly. The big moments register small."
I think he completely missed something there.All I keep hearing is, Rose is supposed to be played ferociously, screaming her lines, making you want to hate her and be afraid of her. I really don't think this was intended when the show was written. I mean not in such a straight forward way.There's only so many times an audience can stand to be yelled at and to have lines basically thrown at them. There are many ways to convey a feeling or emotion. Rose doesn't have to necessarily scream all the time to be a "monster". I think the fact that Bernadette takes these big moments and uses small subtleties to convey certain things to the audience is much more interesting to watch and actually makes it mean more for the audience than having someone basically say "ok, I'm playing a monster so I'm going to play into the same mundane way its always been played...loud, bossy and straight forward." I don't want to belittle any of the other actresses who have played this role before, but playing a mean, heartless b*tch is almost too easy. It doesn't take a lot acting wise to get up there and scream at people for 3 hours (although I'm sure it does vocally LOL). What really makes a gifted performer is one who can give you the same feelings and realizations that are needed but in a less obvious, not so much in your face kind of way. And besides, if Mama Rose is suppose to be played like a truck driver throughout the entire show then are we really supposed to believe she reads Variety?? LOL
| mu333
Registered User
Registered:
5/13/2003 | posted: 5/28/2003 at 11:06:54 PM ET
Bwaybaby- Great analysis! I enjoyed reading your commentary.
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