Peters brings Mama Rose to life in 'Gypsy'

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), May 4, 2003 | by Peter Marks The Washington Post

NEW YORK -- Put all that dread anticipation of a kewpie-doll Mama Rose to rest. When Bernadette Peters plants herself center stage for the great Act 1 closer "Everything's Coming Up Roses," the monstrous stage mother of "Gypsy" is born anew. She's a sultrier and sadder Rose than you're likely to have encountered before. Her manic quest to conquer vaudeville through her daughters is the work of a vicarious thrill-seeker who now more than ever seems a thwarted entertainer deserving of a shot of her own.

She's a downright sexy Rose, in point of fact, one who uses her body as shrewdly as the strippers she disparages. And that's just swell. The toxic speculation on the Web and in the papers in recent weeks over whether Peters was up to the job turns out to have been a lot of hooey. Lost in all the hand-wringing was an appreciation of Peters' range and an acknowledgment of her place in the pantheon.

If she hasn't earned the right to play this legendary showbiz terrorist, who has? And who's to say the last word on Rose's black impulses belonged to Angela Lansbury or Tyne Daly or even Ethel Merman, all of whom also played her on Broadway since the show's debut in 1959?

If Peters' Rose seems, in the early scenes of Sam Mendes' solid new production, less than overpowering, you'll understand how the portrayal has been building by the time she hits the emotional heights in "Roses." For Rose, it's one of the lowest moments in the musical -- daughter June, star of the execrable act they've been dragging from town to town for years, has run off with a dancer -- and Rose is suddenly faced with the complete ransacking of her hopes.

Peters approaches this anthem to self-delusion, one of the more searing numbers in a flawless score by Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim, as if it were an over-the-counter mood-booster. So pale she's almost spectral, she manages to look both frail and feral. On a tacky tour to nowhere, she is instructing us all in the art of survival. Your eyes well up at the sight of her; you can't help feeling some of what she feels. In that instant, she's the keeper of your dreams, too.

Her performance is rightly the dominant force in this "Gypsy," which opened Thursday at the Shubert Theatre. It imbues the show with all the starriness it requires. But if you come expecting to be blown away by the musical's legendary firepower, you may be a little disappointed.

The sense of the tragic that so majestically hovers over Peters has the effect of muting some of the show's magic. Her brand of chutzpah is not the double-barreled weapon that may have been wielded by some of her brassier predecessors, and so the production doesn't set off all the expected comic sparks, or leave you breathless.

Mendes, the versatile film and stage director, responsible for such varied successes as the Oscar-winning "American Beauty," a bravura Broadway "Cabaret" (with Alan Cumming and Natasha Richardson) and a heart-pounding "Uncle Vanya" (with Simon Russell Beale and Emily Watson), has on this outing for the most part opted for the conventional. Aside from Peters' haunted, sensual Rose, echoes of previous productions abound, down to the strobe-light effect used to fast-forward Rose's kids from stage tykes to adolescents.

"Gypsy," of course, is a knife in the heart of theatrical glamour, and the genius of Styne and Sondheim, in collaboration with book writer Arthur Laurents, is in allowing us inside Rose's head, where the dismal backstage world of two-

bit animal acts and hack comics exists as a universe of possibility. We learn, if she never does, that the seeds one plants may eventually grow, but if you've misread the package, they don't necessarily come up roses. The idea of unintended results extends to the score: The opening song, "May We Entertain You," written as a treacly vehicle for Baby June, mutates into the evening's slightly sinister penultimate number, "Let Me Entertain You," used to accompany her sister Louise's striptease.

Mendes evokes the tawdry depths of Rose's ambition most satisfyingly in the famous scene set in a burlesque palace, where the act, now headlined by Louise (Tammy Blanchard), has washed up -- and where Louise is treated to the uproarious wisdom of a trio of strippers in the reliable show-topper "You Gotta Get a Gimmick." The director also magnifies our sense of burlesque as a baser venue when one of the strippers, Tessie Tura (the hilarious Heather Lee), brandishes a roll of toilet paper on her way to the john.

In "Gimmick," Lee is joined by a pair of unlikely sex objects, fleshy Mazeppa (Kate Buddeke) and spaced-out Electra (an amazing Julie Halston), for a rendition that seems calculated not to overwhelm the rest of the show. Often in "Gypsy," Electra, whose gimmick is a skimpy suit of blinking lights, is illuminated like a neon sign. Mendes employs only a few bulbs, as if to remind us that we are in a theatrical realm of dimmer talents.

On the whole, the ensemble provides sturdy support. John Dossett acquits himself admirably as Herbie, Rose's romantic interest and full-time doormat. The little girls Mendes found for Baby June (Heather Tepe) and Baby Louise (Addison Timlin) are terrific, and Kate Reinders is a wonder as the teenage June, forced to play 9 and desperately wanting to be 29. As Tulsa, the lead boy in the act, David Burtka is a bit wan; his star turn in "All I Need Is the Girl" is not as explosively dexterous as one would like.