Curtain Up! Inside the Starry Opening Night of Gypsy
Here she is, boys! The best of Broadway turned out on Thursday evening for the splashy opening night of Gypsy, starring six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald and directed by George C. Wolfe. As a double-decker bus emblazoned with the words “AUDRA GYPSY” circled 44th Street, stars like Cynthia Erivo (flashing her signature nails), Lin-Manuel Miranda, Iman (in a shimmering cheetah-print suit), Ayo Edebiri, Jonathan Groff, and Lea Michele braved the chill for one of the most anticipated premieres of the season. Elsewhere on the red carpet, McDonald’s Gilded Age costars Denée Benton and Kelli O’Hara could be seen exchanging hugs, while Laverne Cox, in black Comme des Garçons, swanned into the theater to a swell of flashbulbs.
Inside the gleaming Majestic, fresh from a facelift after the departure of The Phantom of the Opera in 2023, the mood was electric. Since the show’s announcement last spring, the prospect of Broadway’s winningest actress taking on the role of Rose, the indomitable stage mother to burlesque star and author Gypsy Rose Lee (née Louise Hovick), has gripped theater fans. As the lights dimmed and Jule Styne’s famous overture began, Donna Murphy, another theater legend (and Gilded Age costar), swept into her seat just in time.
Revered as one of the form’s grandest achievements, Gypsy: A Musical Fable premiered on Broadway in 1959 with music by Styne, lyrics by a 28-year-old Stephen Sondheim, and book by Arthur Laurents. Based on Lee’s memoir, a rollicking recounting of her life growing up on the vaudeville circuit and pivot to wisecracking stripper, the show, and its 1962 film adaptation, introduced audiences to Rose Hovick, aka Mama Rose, Lee’s hard-driving materfamilias and the archetype against which any mother with a child in show business has since been compared.
For McDonald, her way into Rose was less about the character’s bad behavior than the deep, almost pathological connection she has to her daughters, Louise and June. “Just how in love with her children she is,” McDonald emphasized while driving to the theater from her home in Westchester earlier this week. “There’s this huge hole in her heart where her [own] mother abandoned her. So I think she just pours it all into her children.” This comes through in a wrenching, triumphant performance by McDonald that manages to make Rose a sympathetic, fascinating character and not a one-dimensional monster who belts.
Starring alongside McDonald is Danny Burstein as Rose’s put-upon agent and lover, Herbie. Burstein’s path to the role began two years ago, when he and McDonald were working together on The Good Fight. He recalls her taking a call during a break on set, and after hanging up, “she looked deep into my eyes and kind of squinted and went, ‘There’s a project that’s upcoming that you would be so right for.’” They didn’t talk about it further, but he put the pieces together after a meeting with Wolfe over the summer.
Burstein’s Herbie is lovable and warm, but also fierce enough to spar with McDonald’s formidable Rose. “I’m the luckiest son of a bitch in the world. I get to stand there while she sings ‘Everything’s Coming Up Roses’ and just marvel at her brilliance every single night,” Burstein says. The famous number is Rose’s big Act One closer, and as the curtain went down for intermission on Thursday, it was clear to the crowd they were witnessing a singular performance. McDonald describes Rose as a tornado, and it is exhiliarting to watch her wind up her talents to their full capacity. During intermission, Erivo and Lena Waithe mingled with Phylicia Rashad and Debbie Allen as raves began to circulate.
As Rose’s daughters, Joy Woods and Jordan Tyson are equally captivating. Tyson, playing the favorite child, June, is bracing and heartbreaking, while Woods’s transformation from awkward duck to soigné striptease artist is deftly graded. “I think it’s the first role where I don’t have singing or anything to hide behind,” says Woods, who starred in The Notebook earlier this year before joining the Gypsy cast, though her “Little Lamb” is quietly moving.
