Gypsy
January 25 – February 11, 2001
Book by Arthur Laurents
Music by Jule Styne
Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Directed by Victoria Bussert

Press Release

January 15, 2001
Great Lakes Theater Festival’s
Production of Gypsy Heats Up Ohio Theatre
Tony Award-Winner Donna McKechnie Stars!

Great Lakes Theater Festival lights up the stage of the Ohio Theatre with one of Broadway’s most memorable musical comedy’s, Gypsy, directed by Victoria Bussert and featuring Tony Award-winner Donna McKechnie as Mama Rose.

“We are thrilled to kick off the 21st century with one of the great American theater works of the 20th century,” says GLTF artistic director James Bundy. “The musical comedy is uniquely American and the sheer physical wizardry needed to create a production of this scope is as demanding and complex as anything imagined by Elizabethan or Greek dramatists. It’s as exciting and rich an art form as exists in live theater and it takes an extraordinary combination of artists to create it.” Bundy added, “We’re especially proud to welcome Tony Award winner Donna McKechnie to the Great Lakes Theater Festival family, along with her outstanding fellow actors, and to once again produce the work of our remarkable Resident Director, Victoria Bussert.”

Three virtuosos of American musical theater wrote Gypsy – the book is by Arthur Laurents, music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The production, originally starring Ethel Merman as Mama Rose, was an instant hit when it opened at the Broadway Theatre, May 21, 1959. The production ran for 702 performances, and has since been made into three movies (one for television), and two Broadway revivals.

Based on the memoirs of entertainer Gypsy Rose Lee, Gypsy tells the story of Rose, an overbearing stage mother who is determined to make her girls stars of vaudeville. Rose overwhelmingly favors the younger sister, June, who is the star of the act while Louise (Gypsy) fills in dressed as a boy or a cow. Rose’s attention eventually turns to her older daughter, but it’s Louise herself who discovers her own talent, and becomes a bigger star than Rose ever dreamed possible. Set against the freewheeling days of vaudeville and burlesque, Gypsy explores ambition, jealousy, family relationships and the bittersweet loss of innocence.

Donna McKechnie makes her GLTF debut as domineering stage mother Mama Rose. Ms. McKechnie received the Tony and Drama Desk Awards for her role as “Cassie” in A Chorus Line, and was nominated for the Helen Hayes Award for Best Actress for playing the title role in Bob Fosse’s last production, the National Tour of Sweet Charity. Other Broadway shows include How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Promises, Promises, Sondheim Ð A Musical Tribute (which she also choreographed), On the Town and Company. She also starred in dozens of musicals and plays off-Broadway and at regional theaters. She has sung on a dozen cast recordings. In addition to her theater credits, Ms. McKechnie performs in concert, cabaret and with symphony orchestras around the country and in London with the BBC.

Joining Ms. McKechnie is Anne Torsiglieri as Louise/Gypsy. Ms. Torsiglieri’s Broadway credits include Parade, Blood Brothers and Miss Saigon. She toured nationally with Les Miserables. Regional credits include I Do, I Do and Gift of the Magi at The Cleveland Play House as well as work at many other regional theaters.

Jennifer Rae Beck plays June, Gypsy’s younger, much-favored sister. Ms. Beck played June opposite Bette Midler in the remake of the movie Gypsy. She recently appeared as Marta in Company at The Cleveland Play House. Other credits include the national tours of Les Miserables, Evita, and the Broadway bound Fiddler on the Roof revival starring Topol.

John Woodson, playing mild-mannered Herbie, appeared at GLTF earlier this season as Macduff in Macbeth. Mr. Woodson was seen on Broadway in Medea with Diana Rigg, played Exeter in Henry V and Kent in King Lear with F. Murray Abraham for NY Public Theater. He has worked extensively off-Broadway, and in many regional theaters including four seasons with Alabama Shakespeare Festival.

Cleveland-based actors in Gypsy include Alison Hernan, Laura Perrotta and Anne Tofflemire who play the three strippers Mazeppa, Electra and Tessie Tura. Dudley Swetland and Rohn Thomas appear in several roles in the production. Seven local children also appear in the production, including Betsy Hogg as Baby June and Emily Krassen as Baby Louise.

Choreographer Janet Watson pairs with Victoria Bussert as they did for A Little Night Music at GLTF. Ms. Watson choreographed the original Tony Award-winning production of Big River and later recreated her work for the national tour and the Japanese production. Off-Broadway she choreographed the acclaimed revivals of I Do! I Do!, and Pacific Overtures as well as working at many theaters throughout the country. Carol Schuberg is assistant choreographer.

Music director Steven Gross’ Broadway credits as conductor include Cats, The Most Happy Fella, The Day Before Spring and Into the Woods as well as several productions at New York City Opera. He recently conducted the pre-Broadway run of Finian’s Rainbow at The Palace Theater, Playhouse Square, and the European premiere of Cy Coleman’s musical The Life. He has also conducted productions off-Broadway and throughout Europe. Mr. Gross leads a seven-piece orchestra for Gypsy. Assistant music director is Nancy Gantose Maier.

GLTF resident designer John Ezell created the sets for Gypsy. He is currently in his 27th season with the Festival. James Scott, costume designer for GLTF productions of A Little Night Music and Fallen Angels, designed the costumes for Gypsy. Lighting designer for Gypsy is Norman Coates, who returns to GLTF for his third production. Previous, he designed lighting for GLTF’s The Most Happy Fella and School for Wives. Mr. Coates has designed over 200 productions on Broadway, off-Broadway, and regionally.

GLTF Resident Director Victoria Bussert has been with GLTF for 15 seasons. Last season she directed the critically-acclaimed production of A Little Night Music. She has also recently directed The Most Happy Fella and She Loves Me for the Festival. She has directed the second National Tours of Into the Woods, Once On This Island, The Secret Garden and Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story. She is Chair of the Musical Theater program for Baldwin-Wallace College.

The performance schedule for Gypsy includes previews on January 25 and 26 at 7:30 p.m. with Opening Night on Saturday, January 27 at 7:30 p.m. Performances are scheduled for Wednesday through Saturday evenings at 7:30 p.m., Sunday matinees at 1:30 p.m., and a Wednesday matinee on January 31 at 1:30 p.m. A signed-interpreted performance is scheduled for Sunday, February 4 at 1:30 p.m., and an audio-described performance is scheduled for Sunday, February 11 at 1:30 p.m. Tickets range from $21 to $42. For tickets call 216/241-6000. Discounts and group rates are available by calling 216/241-5490.

In conjunction with its production of Gypsy, Great Lakes Theater Festival in partnership with Cleveland Live, The Free Times and Soft Rock 102.1 WDOK presents Coming Up Roses, a post-show party. On Saturday, February 10, following the performance of Gypsy, patrons can attend the party and meet cast members from Gypsy backstage at Playhouse Square. Tickets start at $45 for the performance and party. Party tickets alone are $15 advance, and $20 at the door. To order tickets call 216/241-5490.

Since 1962, Great Lakes Theater Festival has brought the pleasure, power and relevance of classic theater to the widest possible audience in Northern Ohio.

Great Lakes Theater Festival is one of 17 arts organizations participating in BASICs, a five-year program of The Cleveland Foundation. BASICs organizations receive operating support, customized technical assistance and grants to help build capacity to manage the necessary risk-taking of their art forms.

Review

The Plain Dealer
Monday, January 29, 2001
McKechnie leads fine cast in Great Lakes’ ‘Gypsy’
By Tony Brown

The first question is, what’s a classic company like Great Lakes Theater Festival doing performing a 1959 musical like “Gypsy”?

It’s doing very well, thank you, despite a few shortcomings and opening-night jitters Saturday at the Ohio Theatre in Playhouse Square. And despite star Donna McKechnie’s case of laryngitis that forced the cancellation of Friday night’s final preview and Sunday afternoon’s matinee.

The second question that must follow is: Can a performer who earned her reputation as a dancer/singer take one of the greatest all-out singing roles in the musical theater canon, Mama Rose, and make it her own?

McKechnie, the Tony Award-wining actress from “A Chorus Line,” is certainly no Ethel Merman, who was a human steamroller in the part. But McKechnie, who sang Saturday night despite her health problems, gets at something more quietly sinister about the most famous stage mom in show business history.

Audiences may be more accustomed to seeing Shakespeare and Ibsen at Great Lakes, but “Gypsy” is every bit a classic, the last great musical in a decade of great musicals, the 1950s.

Using the autobiography of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee as a starting point, Laurents created what is simultaneously the greatest backstage musical and one of the most deeply psychological musicals of its time.

A stage mom pushes her two daughters to stardom, driving the one she loves away (Baby June, who would become actress June Havoc) and the one she neglects from crumbling vaudeville and into burlesque (Louise, who becomes Gypsy).

Jule Styne, an inconsistent composer, created what many consider to be the best score in musical theater, prodded by his young lyricist, Stephen Sondheim, who wanted to write the music himself.

The score, decorated with show-business brass, has at its core the percussive drive of a freight train, symbolic of the constant moving from town to town and theater to theater of its driven-to-succeed characters.

This is entirely appropriate, because it was written for Merman, a freight train of a performer. Many others have played this role successfully: Rosalind Russell in the movie, Angela Lansbury and Tyne Daly in stage revivals and Bette Midler in a made-for-television film. Each left her mark. But the role will always belong to the first woman who played it.

Merman was not, however, a particularly good actress. Sondheim called her a “singing dog,” a bellowing freak show on feet. Besides, if every actress who plays the part is expected to be Merman, no production of it can be successful but the first.

Taking on big songs McKechnie, who is perhaps more at home in subtler roles such as Sally in Sondheim’s “Follies,” has little of Merman’s steel. With help from a microphone and a sound system cranked up to “loud,” she nonetheless takes on this awesome role’s many songs: “Some People,” “Small World,” “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” and slowly builds a more calculating and less overtly monstrous Mama Rose.

Most strikingly, she transforms the final number, “Rose’s Turn,” from a bravura performance in the Merman mold to a broken dream sung by a woman whose entire life has been empty of satisfaction of any kind. Perhaps McKechnie chose to hold back Saturday night because of her ailing throat. It is still a deeply affecting performance that completely breaks free of preconceived notions of the song. Some people will hate it because it isn’t Merman. But others will appreciate what McKechnie has done: reinterpret a great closing number.

Director Victoria Bussert and choreographer Janet Watson do not stray far from the original work of Jerome Robbins (much of which can be seen in the Rosalind Russell film). Their best stuff is seen in the helter-skelter comic romp, “Mr. Goldstone.”

Music director Steven Gross was limited to seven players in his pit, but gets a big, vaudeville sound from them. Set designer John Ezell uses a false proscenium arch and runway to both emphasize the showbiz milieu and create an intimacy in the 1,000-seat theater, itself a veteran of the vaudeville days. The work of costumer James Scott, however, is often irritatingly out of sync and date. The women of the era would have worn hats, and McKechnie wears the same dress for much of Act 1, which spans years.

Fine Performances
The entire 25-member cast performs well, especially Anne Torsiglieri as Louise/Gypsy. She leaves the audience nearly as dewy-eyed as she is in singing “Little Lamb,” and she seamlessly goes from klutzy kid to slinky stripper.

Jennifer Rae Beck nails the superficial charms of June. John Woodson gives Herbie, the man Rose uses to further her own ends, a big dose of dignity. And singer Anne Tofflemire is at full shrill as the most brazen of the three strippers who show Louise the burlesque ropes.

Technical miscues, slow set changes and an off-kilter pace pocked Saturday night’s opening. That’s to be expected for a big show that missed its last preview.

And, in case you haven’t yet heard, Ethel Merman does not play Mama Rose. But, boy howdy, Donna McKechnie does.

©2000 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.