Racial Undercurrent of George C. Wolfe’s Production of ‘Gypsy’ Comes Through Clearly in Newly Released Cast Album

‘Gypsy’‘The 2024 Original Cast Album’Music by Jule Styne & Lyrics by Stephen SondheimSometimes I miss the point, or at least come close to it. When it was first announced that a six-time Tony award winner, Audra McDonald, was coming back to Broadway for “Gypsy,” I couldn’t see how it was going to work — musically, I mean. Ms. McDonald is a proper soprano whose best role on Broadway, in my opinion, was the titular heroine of George and Ira Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess.” If that classic work is the great American opera, then Ms. McDonald is the American theater’s greatest formal-style singer.As is well known, Mama Rose in “Gypsy” is entirely different — the role, and the songs, were created for Ethel Merman, who in her autobiography described her own singing as “a big tooty thing.” Merman’s singing was just as artistically valid as any Carnegie Hall coloratura, but it was all about power and projection as opposed to operatic niceties. Jule Styne said more than once that he crafted the music in a guttural, down-to-earth style that reflected the lower-class, seamier side of old-time show business. That was the world he came of age in, and one that he knew well.You wouldn’t cast an operatic soprano — say, Renée Feming — as Mama Rose, would you? Or would you? It’s here that the racial implications of the casting play a factor. The well-informed critic and historian who runs the highly recommended “Musical Theater Report” blog/newsletter, Ben West, points out that “the exceptionally fine material for ‘Gypsy’ was not written to account for the socio-political implications of an interracial relationship in the 1920s and 30s.” In other words, Styne, Sondheim, and librettist Arthur Laurents weren’t writing about a couple consisting of a Caucasian man — Rose’s love interest, such as it is, “Herbie,” played by the excellent Danny Burstein — and an African American woman. He might have added that these characters are loosely based on historical figures, and the real-life Rose and Herbie don’t fit that description either. Still, the racial angle illuminates other aspects of the casting, especially musically. Traditionally, grand opera divas were considered over-qualified for musical theater, and when a superstar soprano appeared on Broadway, it was almost seen as slumming.So consider this: Until recently, African Americans who wanted to compete for the same jobs as white people essentially had to be over-qualified — at a period when it was surprisingly common for Pullman porters to have graduate degrees in chemistry — and Black women even more so. Although never stated explicitly, that’s the undercurrent of George C. Wolfe’s production of “Gypsy,” which comes through so clearly in the newly released cast album. In this version, Mama Rose doesn’t necessarily love show business or even like it much, but she realizes that this is virtually the only option for herself and her daughters. The odds against a Black woman becoming a star singer or actress in 1930 were astronomical, but it was even less likely that she could succeed in law, medicine, science, business, or politics.“Gypsy” is characteristically described as casting “an affectionate eye on the hardships of show business life,” but it is significantly less affectionate here. Mr. Wolfe’s production revels in the seamy underside of show business, from crooked children’s talent contests to grimy backstages and dressing rooms, and inhospitable living conditions of low-level bottom-feeding vaudevillians on the road — though those conditions would have been even worse if they had retrofitted the book to show how non-white performers at that time had to contend with segregation and legally sanctioned racism.In this way, Ms. McDonald turns a potential liability — the inherent moral and musical differences between the nature of her voice and that of the score — into an asset. Rose is both tender and terrible, sincere and sinister even in the more intimate songs: “Small World,” her aria of romantic discovery with her love interest, Mr. Burstein, and “You’ll Never Get Away From Me” and “Together (Wherever We Go),” in which she’s majestically manipulative, trying to block those around her from deploying an exit strategy. I grew up with “Together” as cheerful variety-show fodder for the likes of Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé — who sang with supreme musicianship and genuine affection. But even in Rose’s happier moments, there’s a disturbing undercurrent, a sense of desperation that comes through like an unstoppable force in “Some People” and “Everything’s Coming Up Roses.”The other major aspect of the new recording is a shifted emphasis in what scholars call the “diagetic” numbers, those sequences that are performed on stage in the vaudeville show within the actual show, “Baby June and her Newsboys” and “Dainty June and her Farmboys,” which incorporate the show’s running “mantra” number, “Let Me Entertain You.” As with the stripper number, these were Jule Styne’s forte, which grew out of his experiences in vaudeville and burlesque as a young pianist in Chicago. The “Farmboys” number even opens with a quote from “The Blue Danube” waltz by Johann Strauss II that suggests an old-time theatrical attempt to evoke rusticality, and likewise there’s a whole 90-second dance routine based on John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever.” As the Sun’s Jeremy McCarter pointed out in a review of the show 20 years ago, the Baby/Dainty June numbers are, in a very real way, all about mediocre show biz; it’s supposed to be a second-rate act, and in a sense we’re meant to laugh at June and Louise, rather than with them. The “act” numbers are a particular delight of the new album, as performed by, respectively, Marley Lianne Gomes and Jordan Tyson as Baby and the teenager June, and Summer Rae Daney and Joy Woods as Baby and the teenager Louise. “The Newsboys” number in particular is supposed to show how Mama Rose and company are working too hard to convince everyone that Baby June is going to be a star; essentially the whole number is the quartet of dancing newsboys and June herself all singing about how great she is. If these numbers shine in this version, it’s because here, for once, the affection, from the creators Laurents, Styne, and Sondheim, is genuine. The act itself may be filled with period clichés — and granted that listeners in 2025 won’t recognize them as immediately as those in 1959 did — but the Junes and Louises perform them without irony. There’s only one stripper number, “You Gotta Have a Gimmick,” and it’s performed brilliantly by Lesli Margherita, Lili Thomas, and Mylinda Hull. Like the “Cell Block Tango” in “Chicago,” it’s kind of a masterpiece, at once erotic and completely demented. Lastly, the new recording underscores a rather abstract contention that I’ve always maintained: that “Gypsy” is, indirectly, a parallel to Walt Disney’s “Dumbo.” Both are about underdogs who discover slowly that they have extraordinary gifts. Louise doesn’t become an “ecdysiast” much less a superstar until the very ending, just as Dumbo doesn’t actually get off the ground until the last scene. That metaphor is enhanced in the Wolfe-McDonald production; a Black woman has as much of a chance of succeeding in the bad old days of segregated America as an elephant does of flying. Somehow, against all odds, they both make it to the top. In the immortal words of Mazeppa (Ms. Thomas), “To have no talent is not enough.”

Racial Undercurrent of George C. Wolfe’s Production of ‘Gypsy’ Comes Through Clearly in Newly Released Cast Album

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