REVIEW: Audra McDonald in Gypsy on Broadway UPDATED

One of the best Golden Age Musicals ever written is given another Broadway revival that feels incomplete.

Audra McDonald as Rose in Gypsy on Broadway

Another in the series of Broadway reviews I will be publishing over the next couple of weeks. Thank you to everyone who takes the time to read my Substack and especially all my subscribers. If you would like access to hundreds of reviews, interviews, short stories, podcasts, videos and playlists then please consider a paid or free subscription. Thank You.

The role of Rose in Gypsy hangs over the careers of the best musical theatre actresses. Playing the world’s pushiest stage mother marks out a legacy for a performers in the same way that taking on Everest is seen as the ultimate challenge for mountaineers. Originally written for the loudest voice in showbiz, Ethel Merman, Gypsy has been revived five times on Broadway since its original opening in 1959 with the most incredible group of women having played the lead role:

1974 Angela Lansbury

1989 Tyne Daly

2003 Bernadette Peters

2008 Patti Lupone

2024 Audra McDonald.

There was also a 2015 West End Revival with Her Very Much Highness Dame Imelda Staunton and this year a critically acclaimed Spanish production directed by Antonio Banderas enjoyed sold out runs in Malaga and Madrid and featured the incredible Marta Ribera as Rose.

And now we have Audra McDonald opening in Gypsy on Broadway. McDonald has more Tony awards (six), than any other performer and has won for both musicals and straight plays so would seem to be perfectly cast. She is also the first woman of colour to play the role on Broadway.

The Director George C Wolfe is renowned for the quality of his work and has also won numerous awards including Tonys. And scattered around Audra is a supporting cast of incredible actors including Danny Burstein as Herbie and the Tony nominated Joy Woods as Louise.

But something in Audra / Gypsy (as it is being promoted), does not quite fire up. There is nothing wrong with the show itself which is considered one of the finest musicals ever written. It is this production that gets itself stuck in a creative dead end and, as much as I loved my time spent in its company, there was nothing new on show, no original take on the material or sly sideways look at what the show tells us.

This is most definitely not a Daniel Fish Oklahoma or Jamie Lloyd Sunset BLVD, a fact that traditionalists will celebrate and I would debate. Theatre, like all art, is not something to be set in aspic but version is less revival and more of a resuscitation of the same Gypsy we have seen for the last 65 years. The sets could have come from the original Broadway run - we had flats with old fashioned Broadway theatre names painted on them, like a high school production of Guys and Dolls, there was even laundry hanging on a line when the girls were rehearsing the Toreadors number. It was all obvious and telegraphed and stodgy. I wanted to love it more but I needed some layers to be peeled back so I could look into the beast from 1959 with eyes and a heart from 2025.

In her memoirs Patti Lupone talks about the 2008 production that forced book writer Arthur Laurents to take a new look at his own show. In a recent interview the ever regal Baron Lord Lloyd Weber agreed that it was time for his older shows (Sunset BLVD opened in 1994), to be reimagined.

And I am not looking for monochrome, smoke and close up cameras or horny cowboys playing steel guitar - unless these elements could help us find something more in Gypsy. But I am looking for a new reason to see an old show.

The only nod to understanding Gypsy differently is casting a Juilliard trained soprano in a big, brassy alto role. The creative team have described this as ‘enabling us to hear Rose in a different way’ - what they mean is hearing the character sung in a way that doesn’t quite work. The fact that Ms McDonald is an exceptional singer and actor does not mean that she can sing this role and it is a shame because every other aspect of her performance is exceptional. But when she slips into her soprano head voice for a couple of notes mid-song, the bold as brass Rose disappears like an AM station on a car radio when you go under a motorway bridge.

This distraction does not affect the rest of the cast who do a great job and I think Joy Woods is a very strong contender for a Tony Award. From the moment she sees what Tulsa might be offering her in All I Need is The Girl we sense a certain steeliness start in her spine. Ultimately Tulsa (a magnificent Kevin Csolak), lets her down but his departure sets off a string of changes to Louise’s life which Ms Woods has taken on, has thought about, moulded and used to great effect in her performance.

As the character’s confidence grows so the actress builds physically and vocally eventually metamorphosing into a stunning 1950s glamour soaked movie star with poise, elegance and class. She positively shimmers in the last quarter of the show and the delivery of “I thought you did it for me Mama” sucks the air out of the theatre.

Joy Woods as Gypsy Rose Lee in Gypsy on Broadway

This show should be on your bucket list if you consider theatre an important art form and I am beyond glad that I got to enjoy it. With its intense focus on Rose’s obsessive ambition (that borders on child abuse), and the brutality of its third act, Gypsy teeters on the brink of tragedy. There are serious issues addressed here and characters that have so much more to tell us but, unless a director forgets what has gone before, and has the courage to dig deep into its soul, then this most thought provoking of musicals will sink into cliché, hack and irrelevance. Who will take up the mantle?

Gypsy with Audra McDonald is playing at The Majestic Theatre NYC

Find out more and book tickets for Gypsy on Broadway HERE

Thank you to everyone who takes the time to read my Substack and especially all my subscribers. If you would like access to hundreds of reviews, interviews, short stories, podcasts, videos and playlists then please consider a paid or free subscription. Thank You.