Audra McDonald on "Gypsy" and playing the mother of all stage mothers

She’s the mother of all stage mothers: Rose, a single mom hellbent on turning her two young daughters into stars during the waning days of vaudeville. But in the musical “Gypsy,” she gets top billing. Rosalind Russell played her in the 1962 movie; Bette Midler in the 1993 TV version; and on stage, where it all started, Rose has been played by some of Broadway’s greats, including Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Bernadette Peters and Patti LuPone. 

And opening this week, six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald will take on one of musical theater’s most demanding roles. “It’s a high gear the entire time,” she said. “And instead of someone sweeping me up in the tornado, I’m the tornado!”

It’s a part that’s been compared to Shakespeare’s King Lear. According to Erick Neher, cultural editor for the Hudson Review, “What Lear is to classical actors, that is what Rose is to musical theater. It’s the Everest. It’s the summit. It’s an impossible role in a way, and yet every great musical theatre actress wants to test herself with it.”

McDonald said, “Everest is there for a reason. People want to climb it, right? I mean, it’s there because it’s majestic and it’s incredible, and people are like, ‘I want to figure out if I can get up there.’ And that’s what I’m trying to do.”

The musical was inspired by the memoir of Gypsy Rose Lee, one of the world’s most famous striptease artists. But the musical’s creators, including writer Arthur Laurents, weren’t interested in telling her story. Neher said, “The really interesting thing about the show ‘Gypsy’ is that it’s not really about Gypsy Rose Lee or even her sister June, who became a very well-known actress, June Havoc. It’s about their mother, a tyrannical, insane, fabulous woman who pushed these two young girls onto the stage.”

It’s Rose who volunteers her older daughter to perform a striptease for the first time. Were audiences shocked by the idea of a mother who would push her daughter to basically become a stripper? “It’s still shocking today, I think, when we see it,” said Neher.

Before “Gypsy,” stage mothers were largely played for laughs, as they still are today; think reality shows like “Dance Moms.” Neher said, “What really differentiates ‘Gypsy’ is that it’s the first work in any genre that I can think of that takes this comic character of the pushy stage mother and then does this psychological deep-dive into it.”

“I admire the ferocity,” said five-time Tony Award-winner George C. Wolfe, who is directing this production. “I think it’s about not enough, people living with not enough: Not enough money, not enough space, not enough love, not enough approval, not enough success. And it becomes this dynamic of people wanting that thing, desperately wanting that thing that is just beyond their reach.”

The question that looms over any production of “Gypsy” is, why does this woman drive her children so hard … and ultimately away from her?

McDonald said, “I think she is a dedicated mother. I think she is a fiercely protective mother. I think she is a mother who does not realize that the umbilical cord has been cut. I don’t see Rose as a monster mother at all.”

So, is she in this for her kids, or for herself? “I don’t think she can differentiate between the two,” McDonald said.

Rose may stop at nothing in pursuit of her dream. But the director and star of this production – the first on Broadway in which mother and daughters are played by Black actors – say there’s a good reason.

According to Wolfe, “It’s not a selfish dream. It’s not a ‘my’ dream. It’s a wonderful dream for me and my kids.”

McDonald adds, “Which is so interesting, too, then, why society has the audacity to say, ‘How dare she have that dream for her kids?’ I did what society laid out for me: ‘No.’ And look where it got me: ‘No.’ My kids are just supposed to go to school like other girls, and cook and clean and sit and die? And especially that feels like that hits hard, too, as a Black woman saying, ‘No, they’re not gonna do that.'”

It may all sound pretty serious for a musical. But did we mention there are some real showstoppers in “Gypsy” … and an adorable pooch?

“She really, really sweet,” McDonald said, who introduced us to the dog who plays Chowsie. “We saw a lotta dogs. It took a while before we found the right one. No one’s watching you when they’re on stage, that much I do know!” she laughed.

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Story produced by Jay Kernis. Editor: Mike Levine. 

       
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