Review Round-up: 'Here She Is World': Audra McDonald in 'Gypsy'

What is likely to be the battle for the Best Actress in a Musical Tony Award next Spring will come down between two stars in revisionist versions of two classic musical: Nicole Scherzinger for her Norma Desmond in "Sunset Boulevard" and six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald in the new revival of "Gypsy," which opened on Thursday at the refurbished Majestic Theatre, where she plays Rose, the mother of all stage mothers. From the first preview on, the buzz was considerable. And judging from the reviews, she triumphed as the sixth Rose to open in the role in a Broadway production.

Arthur Laurents adapted his book from the memoirs of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee that followed her early career in vaudeville when she toured the country with her sister in a vaudeville act with Rose pushing them every step of the way. With an electrifying score by composer Jule Styne and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, "Gypsy," with the dynamic Ethel Merman capping her long career as Rose, opened in 1959 to rapturous reviews. Walter Kerr of the "New York Herald Tribune" called it "the best damn musical I've seen in years." And initially the show was a sell-out, but it failed to win any of the eight Tony Awards it was nominated for and closed after a respectable run of 702 performances with Merman touring. (She hoped by doing so she would get to star in the film version, but no dice: Rosalind Russell was cast instead, which devastated Merman.) The Best Musical Tony that season was shared by "The Sound of Music" (which run twice as long as "Gypsy") and "Fiorello! (which had already won the Pulitzer Prize for some inexplicable reason.) For what many consider her best Broadway performance, Merman lost to Mary Martin, to which she quipped: "How are you going to buck a nun?"

Sondheim has said he wasn't surprised that the musical wasn't a major hit at that time. "It was an unpleasant show by the standards of 1950's musicals, where everyone ends up happy,'' he told Frank Rich in 2003. And while steeped in show business nostalgia, "Gypsy" is an unsentimental show that tells hard truths about parenting. Over the years its reputation has grown to where it is considered amongst the greatest musicals ever written with Rose being compared to King Lear of starring roles. It was Angela Lansbury, first in London in 1973 and Broadway the following year, who showed that "Gypsy" was far more than an Ethel Merman vehicle; and in the years since it has been revived with Tyne Daley, Bernadette Peters, and Patti LuPone, with Peters joining Merman in not winning a Tony.

While Jerome Robbins directed the original production, it has been its librettist Laurents who put his personal stamp on the show, directing three of revivals (1974 with Lansbury; 1989 with Daley; and 2008 with Lupone). British director Sam Mendes directed the troubled 2003 production with Peters that was said to have been loathed by Laurents. At the first preview he was said to have stormed up the aisle and cornered Mendes saying, "Well, you've done something I didn't think anyone could – you've ruined 'Gypsy.'" Laurents denied both saying that and to storming up the aisle as reported by then-New York Post theater columnist Michael Riedel, though he later wrote of disdainfully of Mendes. For his part Mendes called Laurents "scary" and was shocked by the "the poisonous hatred that exuded off this tiny homunculus" in a New Yorker profile.

Since then Laurents and Sondheim have passed, which marks this production, directed by George C. Wolfe, the first to be seen outside of its creative team's shadow. And from all reports, Wolfe also moves away from Laurents' model. While minor changes have been made to the script, he subtlety explores the racial subtexts. This is not a 'color-blind' production; instead McDonald is seen as a Black woman fighting for her children's success in the racist world of show business during the last days of vaudeville. Whether he succeeds or not, is questioned by some of the reviewers; as is whether McDonald is vocally correct for the brassy role. But for the most part, the production received raves, if only for its full-bodied presentation, which includes a cast of 30 and a full orchestra of 25-musicians performing the musical's first orchestrations (augmented some to today's standards). No doubt to hear its blazing overture with the full complement of musicians as it was conceived for is a thrill in itself. But at its center of it all is McDonald. Here are a sampling of the reviews: