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 co-stars 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 co-star), 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 a book by Arthur Laurents. Based on Lee’s memoir, a rollicking recounting of her life growing up on the vaudeville circuit and pivot to wise-cracking stripper, the show, and its 1962 film adaptation, introduced audiences to Rose Hovick, a.k.a. Momma Rose, Lee’s hard-driving mater familias, and the archetype against which any mother with a child in showbusiness 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.
