Imelda Staunton and Lara Pulver in Gypsy at the Savoy Theatre, London. Picture: Roy Tan
Gypsy contines at the Savoy Theatre, London until 28 November.
Star rating: 5 stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Everything’s coming up roses for Imelda Staunton at the Savoy, not least a sheaf of awards surely to be added to her Sweeney Todd laurels as she elevates an already-iconic musical to an elite level of greatness.
As the terrifying, vulnerable, often comic, almost psychotic Momma Rose, this tiny pocket rocket stands ten foot tall in the acting and singing stakes as she dominates the 1959 Jule Styne-Stephen Sondheim-Arthur Laurents-Jerome Robbins masterpiece in its first West End reincarnation for 41 years.
Staunton plays the mother from hell pushing and shoving two untalented daughters to theatrical heights she dreamed of for herself but could never realise, making them perform their nauseatingly cute child act even when fully grown at various low-life pit stops around America’s dying 1920s and ’30s vaudeville scene.
The role was originally a perfect fit for the legendary Ethel Merman on Broadway and later reprised with distinction by Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Bernadette Peters and Patti LuPone in revivals, and if you don’t have an actress-singer of considerable substance, you don’t have a show.
She IS Gypsy and the rest of the large cast, even Lara Pulver, as the timid ugly-sister frog morphing into the glamorous but coldly calculating princess who became the real-life Gypsy Rose Lee, do little more than make up the numbers, certainly until Pulver’s big scene at the end.
If any of those first four Mommas were in the same league as the redoubtable Staunton, they will have been very good indeed – and I can vouch for the fact that the Tony-winning LuPone wasn’t as I saw her, admittedly close to the end of a long run in 2008.
In truth, five stars is nowhere near enough for Staunton’s exquisitely-nuanced performance, from soft and gently persuasive to brutal bully, or this fabulous musical.
The range, power and clarity of her voice is the biggest surprise although it shouldn’t be as she sang Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls and The Baker’s Wife in the 1991 premiere of Into the Woods before wowing us with Mrs Lovett in Sweeney. But Momma Rose’s songs are more demanding.
Sitting just six rows away from Staunton as she launched into her two act-climaxing solos, ‘Everything’s Coming Up Roses’ and the ferocious and ultimately lump-in-the-throat ‘Rose’s Turn’, was to be at a masterclass in seeing exactly what it is that makes great theatre worth paying astronomical prices for.
Sondheim’s razor-sharp lyrics and Styne’s memorable music, beautifully played by a 14-piece no-strings-but three-trumpet orchestra under musical director Nicholas Skilbeck, thrill from the moment the overture strikes up in Jonathan Kent’s exceptional production.
Cast changes from Chichester are small: Peter Davison takes over from Kevin Whately as henpecked lover Herbie and Georgia Pemberton’s Baby June hasn’t made it to The Strand, her part now shared by Isla Huggins-Barr (on the night I saw it) and Scarlet Roche, both as toe-curlingly irritating as they were written to be.
Worthy of special mentions in an outstanding cast are the three past-their-sell-by strippers, hilariously played by Anita Louise Combe, Louise Gold and Julie Legrand, and Dan Burton, not long back from his Don Lockwood lead in Singin’ in the Rain at the Chatelet in Paris, dances wonderfully as Tulsa, the guy who whisks June away from her frightening mother to pastures new.
The period is wonderfully evoked in Stephen Mear’s choreography and Anthony Ward’s many clever set variations and not one human being capable of standing failed to do so in appreciation of a remarkable evening.
I was going to say if you don’t go to see anything else in London, see this. But then I remembered the ‘other’ Sondheim in town, the pared-to-a-bone Sweeney Todd in a pop-up pie-and-mash shop in Shaftesbury Avenue.
That’s a theatrical experience like no other. But at least you can buy tickets for Gypsy. Waste no time in doing so!
Jeremy Chapman
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