Gypsy review – Imelda Staunton in superb tale of showbiz and self-delusion
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Version 0 of 1. If proof were needed of the power of the traditional Broadway musical play, one need look no further than Gypsy (1959). Composer Jule Styne, lyricist Stephen Sondheim and book-writer Arthur Laurents are partners in a coalition of equals that has one overriding aim: to tell the tragi-comic story of Momma Rose, who Sondheim called a “showbiz Oedipus”. Momma Rose’s flaw is self-delusion: she believes she can turn a terrible family act into headliners on the vaudeville circuit of the 1920s and 30s and achieve a surrogate fame through her daughter, June. The ironic twist is that it is June’s sister, Louise, who gives Rose a vicarious glimpse of stardom, by becoming the celebrated stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. It’s a good story that views the iron mother with a persistent ambivalence, and Styne’s score and Sondheim’s lyrics preserve a perfect balance between passion and pastiche, self-revelatory solos blending with a glorious evocation of the tackiness of American vaudeville. The specific joy of this production is that it reunites Imelda Staunton with Jonathan Kent, who directed her so memorably in Sweeney Todd; and the first thing to say about Staunton’s Momma Rose is that it is a superb piece of acting. With her piratical hat and bustling gait, Staunton captures all of the character’s determined jauntiness. But it is in the two big arias that close each act that Staunton shows her hand. In Everything’s Coming Up Roses, Staunton displays a rhapsodic, teeth-baring glee only just this side of mania and in Rose’s Turn, in which she mimics the kind of striptease that has made Louise a burlesque star, she suggests a woman on the verge of breakdown. I found Kevin Whately a touch dour as Rose’s long-time lover, but Lara Pulver as Louise graduates immaculately from the overlooked sibling to the coldly calculating stripper. Georgia Pemberton, one of two youngsters playing Baby June, gives an astonishingly assured display of bright-eyed precociousness. Everything about Kent’s production slots perfectly into place. Anthony Ward’s design uses a false proscenium arch to remind us how the characters’ lives are confined by theatre; Stephen Mear’s choreography, especially in the elbow-jutting Together Wherever We Go, pays hymn to the showbiz past; and Nicholas Skilbeck’s pit band has a magnificent, brassy ring. We go to modern musicals seeking sensory stimulus. Gypsy shows that the form, at its best, can also be an exploration of character. • Until 8 November. Box office: 01243 781312. Venue: Chichester Festival theatre |