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Gypsy: Suggested By the memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee
The musical tale of a domineering stage mother's inadvertent creation of a burlesque stripper, now available in paperback for the first time.
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First published April 1, 1994
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About the author
Arthur Laurents
53 books15 followersArthur Laurents was an American playwright, librettist, stage director, and screenwriter. His credits included the stage musicals West Side Story and Gypsy and the film The Way We Were.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
October 21, 2022
I hated this…
September 18, 2019
"Sing out, Louise!" This is the book (or "libretto" if you will) by Arthur Laurents that played Broadway in 1959 with Ethel Merman as the indelible Mama Rose, Julie Styne furnishing the music and Stephen Sondheim the lyrics. It was made into a well-known Warner Bros. musical in 1962 with almost as much impact. Find out what GYPSY looks like on the printed page. This also makes a great accompaniment to the 1959 cast album (now on CD), whose teeny-tiny liner notes do not include lyrics.
(Updated September 18, 2019)
(Updated September 18, 2019)
November 4, 2022
Gypsy looks back at a previous era of great transition in the live entertainment industry (the death of vaudeville) from the perspective of another taking place at the time the play was written (the rise of Sondheim and the cynical Broadway musical). I play the London recording (Angela Lansbury) regularly in the car — to the point that my 3-year-old has memorized stretches of “Together, Wherever We Go.” But weirdly I have never seen the play all the way through. Instead of just queuing up the Bette Midler or Imelda Staunton video like an ordinary bloke might have done, I decided to buy & read the libretto. Of course, I was not disappointed. The dialogue and drama sparkle like Tessie Tura’s gem-studded G-string. I love it.
February 16, 2019
A musical (suggested by the memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee): Book by Arthur Laurents; Music by Jule Styne; Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.
"One of the American musical theatre's masterworks, the show has a story, characters, songs, and theatricality that have rarely been equaled." (Thomas Hischak)
The original Broadway musical premiered in 1959 and was directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins and starred Ethel Merman, giving one of the most complex performances of her long, distinguished career, Sandra Church and Jack Klugman.
This Fireside Theatre Book Club edition contains the complete book including the sensational Stephen Sondheim lyrics to such classic songs as 'May We Entertain You,' 'Some People,' 'Small World' and 'Everything's Coming Up Roses.'
I was lucky enough to pick up this little gem (and many others) in much loved condition from another theatre lover who was selling her collection to a quality second-hand bookshop located in Geelong, Victoria's 'second city.'
So now I can now sing-a-long to these wonderful, unforgettable Jule Styne - Stephen Sondheim songs without screwing up the lyrics! Sad about the voice though!
"One of the American musical theatre's masterworks, the show has a story, characters, songs, and theatricality that have rarely been equaled." (Thomas Hischak)
The original Broadway musical premiered in 1959 and was directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins and starred Ethel Merman, giving one of the most complex performances of her long, distinguished career, Sandra Church and Jack Klugman.
This Fireside Theatre Book Club edition contains the complete book including the sensational Stephen Sondheim lyrics to such classic songs as 'May We Entertain You,' 'Some People,' 'Small World' and 'Everything's Coming Up Roses.'
I was lucky enough to pick up this little gem (and many others) in much loved condition from another theatre lover who was selling her collection to a quality second-hand bookshop located in Geelong, Victoria's 'second city.'
So now I can now sing-a-long to these wonderful, unforgettable Jule Styne - Stephen Sondheim songs without screwing up the lyrics! Sad about the voice though!
April 17, 2025
An amazing look into the entertainment industry in the early 1900s. Written tenderly and humorously I found myself laughing out loud in some parts.
January 24, 2023
I think that this show is great, but reading the script doesn't do much good. The exceptional nature of the lyrics and dialogue comes from watching exceptional actors perform them. Reading this was interesting, but didn't hold my attention nearly as well as watching the recorded 2015 revival because there's so much nuance in the book, and especially the score, that you don't get from just looking at words on paper. This is a useful thing to read if you're interested in the show already, but if you are new to it I'd suggest just watching a filmed version.
December 23, 2024
One of the greatest musicals of all time.
November 3, 2022
Gypsy is based on the memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee, a self-invented personality who worked her way up from burlesque to Broadway with a self-mocking intelligence that today we'd call post-modern. She wrote books, appeared in films and radio and TV shows, and eventually became famous for being famous. (She was, for example, the subject of a whole song in the Rodgers & Hart musical Pal Joey.) She solidified her legend by committing it to print, in the form of her memoir Gypsy, which tells the who-knows-how-true story of her childhood, growing up in the shadow of her very talented younger sister June and being pushed into show business by her indomitable stage mother, Rose.
It is Rose who is the leading character of the musical Gypsy, which traces a journey that begins in Seattle, Washington in the waning years of vaudeville. We watch Rose maneuver and scrape to get her daughters into the "Big Time," and eventually she does, landing them, with the help of her agent/boyfriend Herbie, in the Orpheum Circuit and eventually in a grand theater called Grantzinger's Palace in New York City. But Grantzinger tells Rose that the he doesn't want the whole act, a fanciful if tacky affair worked up by Rose called "Dainty June and Her Farmboys"; all he wants is June, who he thinks can be trained and molded into a real actress. In the play's pivotal moment, Rose refuses in a rage of invective: June belongs to her, not to Grantzinger (not to herself either); she storms out of Grantzinger's office and effectively destroys the one real chance that June has to achieve the dream of stardom that Rose has supposedly been nourishing all these years. It's a complicated and defining moment in Gypsy, one that makes it clear that what feels at first like a colorful and light-hearted chronicle is really a rich and difficult tale about parents and children and dashed hopes and dreams and oh so much more.
What happens next--and if you don't know the show and don't want me to give it away, please skip this paragraph--is that June runs away from home and Rose turns her considerable energies to the older daughter, Louise, determined now to make her into a star. But vaudeville is pretty much dead by now, so the only booking that Herbie can get the new act (called "Rose Louise and Her Toreadorables") is in a second-rate burlesque house in Wichita. (They're the act that's supposed to "keep the cops out.") Rose, Louise, and Herbie are at first mortified at where they've landed, but they decide to tough it out; after the booking, Rose promises, she will marry Herbie and leave her dream behind her. Then the star stripper goes missing one night, and Rose jumps into the breech. "My daughter can strip," she says, and in a matter of minutes, Gypsy Rose Lee is born. The rest, literally, is history. The show ends with Rose coming to terms with some of what's happened to her (in the mammoth "Rose's Turn," which has been described as a musicalized nervous breakdown); and then, perhaps, coming to terms with her now-grown and independent daughter.
Rose is like the Everest of musical heroines: she's got an enormous personality and she sings a lot—seven big numbers, all written for the distinctive clarion voice of Ethel Merman, who originated the role on Broadway in 1959.
It is Rose who is the leading character of the musical Gypsy, which traces a journey that begins in Seattle, Washington in the waning years of vaudeville. We watch Rose maneuver and scrape to get her daughters into the "Big Time," and eventually she does, landing them, with the help of her agent/boyfriend Herbie, in the Orpheum Circuit and eventually in a grand theater called Grantzinger's Palace in New York City. But Grantzinger tells Rose that the he doesn't want the whole act, a fanciful if tacky affair worked up by Rose called "Dainty June and Her Farmboys"; all he wants is June, who he thinks can be trained and molded into a real actress. In the play's pivotal moment, Rose refuses in a rage of invective: June belongs to her, not to Grantzinger (not to herself either); she storms out of Grantzinger's office and effectively destroys the one real chance that June has to achieve the dream of stardom that Rose has supposedly been nourishing all these years. It's a complicated and defining moment in Gypsy, one that makes it clear that what feels at first like a colorful and light-hearted chronicle is really a rich and difficult tale about parents and children and dashed hopes and dreams and oh so much more.
What happens next--and if you don't know the show and don't want me to give it away, please skip this paragraph--is that June runs away from home and Rose turns her considerable energies to the older daughter, Louise, determined now to make her into a star. But vaudeville is pretty much dead by now, so the only booking that Herbie can get the new act (called "Rose Louise and Her Toreadorables") is in a second-rate burlesque house in Wichita. (They're the act that's supposed to "keep the cops out.") Rose, Louise, and Herbie are at first mortified at where they've landed, but they decide to tough it out; after the booking, Rose promises, she will marry Herbie and leave her dream behind her. Then the star stripper goes missing one night, and Rose jumps into the breech. "My daughter can strip," she says, and in a matter of minutes, Gypsy Rose Lee is born. The rest, literally, is history. The show ends with Rose coming to terms with some of what's happened to her (in the mammoth "Rose's Turn," which has been described as a musicalized nervous breakdown); and then, perhaps, coming to terms with her now-grown and independent daughter.
Rose is like the Everest of musical heroines: she's got an enormous personality and she sings a lot—seven big numbers, all written for the distinctive clarion voice of Ethel Merman, who originated the role on Broadway in 1959.
August 11, 2025
The musical "Gypsy" is loosely based on the memoirs of famed burlesque stripper and socialite Gypsy Rose Lee. The book’s actual focus when adapted by playwright Arthur Laurents changed when the story became about Gypsy’s mother, Rose- written for Ethel Merman with music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.
Rose is the ultimate stage mother- obnoxious, pushy, and desperate because she lives vicariously through her daughters Louise and June. When June abandons Rose, she deludes herself that “everything’s coming up roses”. Finally, when Louise transforms into Gypsy, all hell is unleashed after Rose feels that she’s been abandoned.
As a script- it's sharp, crackles with wit, and heightened drama that captures Momma Rose as "an armored tank on autopilot" (from theatre critic Ben Brantley's review of "Gypsy" in 2003) who will stop at nothing to ensure her kids June and Louise (later Gypsy) succeed.
It's also commenting on the backstage drama about the death of vaudeville and the Great Depression with a bleak heart akin to great novels and films such as “They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" “Ironweed” and “Pennies from Heaven” that will lead to the birth of burlesque and the movies.
The tragedy of "Gypsy” is that Rose's selfish and outrageous behavior pushes away all that she's loved, and loves her back: her father, her boyfriend and agent Herbie, and of course, her daughters.
It's the perfect book to a musical that actually does not need the music- and I can see it produced as a straight play. All three principal characters, Rose, Gypsy, and Herbie are all hungry to be seen and loved that they blind themselves to Rose's whims.
But contractually, this will never happen without Jule Style and Stephen Sondheim's music and lyrics. But if one loves musicals- Gypsy boasts the most thrilling overture I've ever heard of in a show, and boasts one of the most devastating finales in theater history through "Rose's Turn".
The libretto includes three great standards of musical theater: "Some People", "Let me Entertain You" and "Everything's Coming Up Roses".
Then there are the fun songs like “You Gotta get a Gimmick” sung by the three strippers Tessie Tura, Mazeppa and Electra; “All I need now is the girl” sung by chorus boy Tulsa, and “Together Wherever We Go” is one of the small moments of joy that Rose, Gypsy and Herbie have as a family.
Disturbingly, “Let Me Entertain You” the context changes with each time it’s sung. No wonder it’s considered such a great Jule Style score and Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics show what a wordsmith he was!
As a kid, I watched the 1962 film version starring Rosalind Russell (a travesty) and the 1993 TV version starring Bette Midler (she's fantastic, although her Rose's Turn falls a bit flat- but I assume to be the closest recorded performance to Ethel Merman's version).
I listened to the recordings that starred Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury and Tyne Daly, and loved them all for their own merits. I have had older friends who told me Ms. Lansbury was considered the best acted Rose.
All were faithful adaptations and recordings I imagined myself seeing until I saw it performed live for the first time in 2003.
Sam Mendes directed a revival starring Bernadette Peters as Rose and Tammy Blanchard as Gypsy Rose Lee.
That production enabled Bernadette Peters to perform the greatest role of her career.
Her Mama Rose was sexy, internal, and terrifying. If anyone saw her perform "Rose's Turn", the 11 o'clock numbers to end all numbers- it was a disturbing and stunning performance of a truly selfish woman who tried to hide her bitterness because she was living through her daughters’ success.
She is self aware and knows that she sabotages everyone's chances of happiness because she finally realizes she’s resented being a mother.
If you want to see what she achieves, watch the YouTube clip of her singing Rose’s Turn with all the fury unleashed from the 2003 Tony Awards.
It was a shattering performance that really explored how suppressed anger can destroy you. Tammy Blanchard's Gypsy (Louise) is someone who is a lot more like her mother than she would've liked to admit.
I also saw the 2008 Broadway production starring Patti LuPone who gives a performance that is both magnetic, yet more sympathetic than Ms. Peters' Rose.
She gave it back to the Merman mold- with brassy singing and belting that raises the roof. She was a Momma that you rooted for.
Laura Benanti's Louise is tough and hardened woman: she will no longer allow Rose to call the shots at the end.
I also was a performer in "Gypsy"- in my youth. I was cast in a local production of the show as chorus member. I played one of Dainty June's farmboys. I remember reading the script during rehearsal with my fellow actors, and fell in love with the theater, tied with the backstage drama and the heartache Arthur Laurents' script was about.
It's all about Rose and Gypsy wanting to find love with each other, and I don't think it actually happens.
It's different in every interpretation. I know for those who saw those two productions there’s the never ending debate of which Rose was better: LuPone or Peters? I’d say just radically different from one another’s.
Note: Here's a link to the 2003 production review:
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/02/mo...
YouTube clip of Bernadette Peters singing "Rose's Turn" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaHh2...
Update: I saw the 2024 revival of "Gypsy" starring the legendary, 6-time Tony Winning actress Audra McDonald as Rose.
McDonald’s Rose comes from a place of abandonment from her mother. Traumatized by this, she is unable to process that loss. As a black actress, McDonald adds layers and nuances that are complex and truly multifaceted.
Unlike Peters who pushes her kids away- McDonald plays Rose with a toxic love that smothers with such desperation. She does this because she knows stardom is the only way her girls will find some protection during the Jim Crow era.
It becomes inevitable that everyone leaves her. The grief of losing her mother, husbands, Herbie and her daughters is too much to bear.
It leads to what is what I think is the most nuanced take of this iconic character when McDonald finally takes the audience for a final, scary roller coaster ride of emotions in Rose’s Turn.
Ms. McDonald’s version of Rose’s Turn is so disturbing and feral that her version is the definition of a Greek tragedy: an ugly, horrifying mental breakdown that she can never recover from.
It is a an attempt in processing decades of trauma as a black woman in the 1920s who wants nothing more than to protect her daughters.
The desire to be close and loved by them is ultimately her downfall.
It’s a wrenching performance that has left me gut punched and I don’t know when again I will see a stage role acted with such power.
Joy Woods makes for an introspective Gypsy, and Danny Burstein plays a Herbie so painfully in love with Ms. McDonald's Rose that he doesn't know how to say no. Both know how mentally ill she is, yet they don’t know how to deal with mental health issues.
Like Bernadette Peters, Audra McDonald should have won the Tony.
Link to McDonald’s 2025 Tony performance:
https://youtu.be/MZ1ob7jqyac?si=Gh-XW...
Ben Brantley’s analysis of Rose’s Turn interpreted by Audra McDonald
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/13/th...
Rose is the ultimate stage mother- obnoxious, pushy, and desperate because she lives vicariously through her daughters Louise and June. When June abandons Rose, she deludes herself that “everything’s coming up roses”. Finally, when Louise transforms into Gypsy, all hell is unleashed after Rose feels that she’s been abandoned.
As a script- it's sharp, crackles with wit, and heightened drama that captures Momma Rose as "an armored tank on autopilot" (from theatre critic Ben Brantley's review of "Gypsy" in 2003) who will stop at nothing to ensure her kids June and Louise (later Gypsy) succeed.
It's also commenting on the backstage drama about the death of vaudeville and the Great Depression with a bleak heart akin to great novels and films such as “They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" “Ironweed” and “Pennies from Heaven” that will lead to the birth of burlesque and the movies.
The tragedy of "Gypsy” is that Rose's selfish and outrageous behavior pushes away all that she's loved, and loves her back: her father, her boyfriend and agent Herbie, and of course, her daughters.
It's the perfect book to a musical that actually does not need the music- and I can see it produced as a straight play. All three principal characters, Rose, Gypsy, and Herbie are all hungry to be seen and loved that they blind themselves to Rose's whims.
But contractually, this will never happen without Jule Style and Stephen Sondheim's music and lyrics. But if one loves musicals- Gypsy boasts the most thrilling overture I've ever heard of in a show, and boasts one of the most devastating finales in theater history through "Rose's Turn".
The libretto includes three great standards of musical theater: "Some People", "Let me Entertain You" and "Everything's Coming Up Roses".
Then there are the fun songs like “You Gotta get a Gimmick” sung by the three strippers Tessie Tura, Mazeppa and Electra; “All I need now is the girl” sung by chorus boy Tulsa, and “Together Wherever We Go” is one of the small moments of joy that Rose, Gypsy and Herbie have as a family.
Disturbingly, “Let Me Entertain You” the context changes with each time it’s sung. No wonder it’s considered such a great Jule Style score and Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics show what a wordsmith he was!
As a kid, I watched the 1962 film version starring Rosalind Russell (a travesty) and the 1993 TV version starring Bette Midler (she's fantastic, although her Rose's Turn falls a bit flat- but I assume to be the closest recorded performance to Ethel Merman's version).
I listened to the recordings that starred Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury and Tyne Daly, and loved them all for their own merits. I have had older friends who told me Ms. Lansbury was considered the best acted Rose.
All were faithful adaptations and recordings I imagined myself seeing until I saw it performed live for the first time in 2003.
Sam Mendes directed a revival starring Bernadette Peters as Rose and Tammy Blanchard as Gypsy Rose Lee.
That production enabled Bernadette Peters to perform the greatest role of her career.
Her Mama Rose was sexy, internal, and terrifying. If anyone saw her perform "Rose's Turn", the 11 o'clock numbers to end all numbers- it was a disturbing and stunning performance of a truly selfish woman who tried to hide her bitterness because she was living through her daughters’ success.
She is self aware and knows that she sabotages everyone's chances of happiness because she finally realizes she’s resented being a mother.
If you want to see what she achieves, watch the YouTube clip of her singing Rose’s Turn with all the fury unleashed from the 2003 Tony Awards.
It was a shattering performance that really explored how suppressed anger can destroy you. Tammy Blanchard's Gypsy (Louise) is someone who is a lot more like her mother than she would've liked to admit.
I also saw the 2008 Broadway production starring Patti LuPone who gives a performance that is both magnetic, yet more sympathetic than Ms. Peters' Rose.
She gave it back to the Merman mold- with brassy singing and belting that raises the roof. She was a Momma that you rooted for.
Laura Benanti's Louise is tough and hardened woman: she will no longer allow Rose to call the shots at the end.
I also was a performer in "Gypsy"- in my youth. I was cast in a local production of the show as chorus member. I played one of Dainty June's farmboys. I remember reading the script during rehearsal with my fellow actors, and fell in love with the theater, tied with the backstage drama and the heartache Arthur Laurents' script was about.
It's all about Rose and Gypsy wanting to find love with each other, and I don't think it actually happens.
It's different in every interpretation. I know for those who saw those two productions there’s the never ending debate of which Rose was better: LuPone or Peters? I’d say just radically different from one another’s.
Note: Here's a link to the 2003 production review:
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/02/mo...
YouTube clip of Bernadette Peters singing "Rose's Turn" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaHh2...
Update: I saw the 2024 revival of "Gypsy" starring the legendary, 6-time Tony Winning actress Audra McDonald as Rose.
McDonald’s Rose comes from a place of abandonment from her mother. Traumatized by this, she is unable to process that loss. As a black actress, McDonald adds layers and nuances that are complex and truly multifaceted.
Unlike Peters who pushes her kids away- McDonald plays Rose with a toxic love that smothers with such desperation. She does this because she knows stardom is the only way her girls will find some protection during the Jim Crow era.
It becomes inevitable that everyone leaves her. The grief of losing her mother, husbands, Herbie and her daughters is too much to bear.
It leads to what is what I think is the most nuanced take of this iconic character when McDonald finally takes the audience for a final, scary roller coaster ride of emotions in Rose’s Turn.
Ms. McDonald’s version of Rose’s Turn is so disturbing and feral that her version is the definition of a Greek tragedy: an ugly, horrifying mental breakdown that she can never recover from.
It is a an attempt in processing decades of trauma as a black woman in the 1920s who wants nothing more than to protect her daughters.
The desire to be close and loved by them is ultimately her downfall.
It’s a wrenching performance that has left me gut punched and I don’t know when again I will see a stage role acted with such power.
Joy Woods makes for an introspective Gypsy, and Danny Burstein plays a Herbie so painfully in love with Ms. McDonald's Rose that he doesn't know how to say no. Both know how mentally ill she is, yet they don’t know how to deal with mental health issues.
Like Bernadette Peters, Audra McDonald should have won the Tony.
Link to McDonald’s 2025 Tony performance:
https://youtu.be/MZ1ob7jqyac?si=Gh-XW...
Ben Brantley’s analysis of Rose’s Turn interpreted by Audra McDonald
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/13/th...
February 21, 2017
This is one of the most famous musicals ever written about the most terrifying of all women. No, it’s not a Bridezilla—it’s a stage mother. Rose is a towering role for any diva to play, a creature that looms over everyone and barrels over anything that will get in the way of her daughter’s success. She is both determined, focused and yet curiously blind, trotting out the same tired vaudeville act and dragging her hapless, wearied children from one broken-down theater to another all in the name of a success that she’s certain is out there…if she only knew where to find it.
Hardly anything dents Rose or stops her either—not the loss of three husbands, not a man’s clinging affections, not her own daughters’s increasing reluctance to perform in a dying art form. Rose is larger than life even as her own life slowly withers and crumbles around her.
This slim volume gives devoted musical aficionados the words of Arthur Laurents, Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics and the stage cues. If you can get a CD of the music, put on your headphones, prop up your feet and listen while you read. Cue the lights; it’s Rose’s turn.
Hardly anything dents Rose or stops her either—not the loss of three husbands, not a man’s clinging affections, not her own daughters’s increasing reluctance to perform in a dying art form. Rose is larger than life even as her own life slowly withers and crumbles around her.
This slim volume gives devoted musical aficionados the words of Arthur Laurents, Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics and the stage cues. If you can get a CD of the music, put on your headphones, prop up your feet and listen while you read. Cue the lights; it’s Rose’s turn.
October 20, 2017
This is a classic story and a tale that makes you wonder if we make ourselves into what we are or if others push us into what we become. A stripper in a Burlesque show may have that answer.
October 27, 2019
Best of the best.
August 3, 2023
Shakespearean razzle dazzle.
“…nothing if not Broadway's own brassy, unlikely answer to King Lear.”
“…nothing if not Broadway's own brassy, unlikely answer to King Lear.”
January 1, 2024
I find both Rose and Ethel Merman irritating. I wonder if it's just that Merman played Rose, or if she was just irritating all by herself. In any case, I love Sondheim's lyrics in this show.
January 2, 2025
Mother Courage for dummies
May 31, 2025
a new dream musical potential????? idk it’s just not often you find a musical with this good of a book.
June 19, 2025
Beautifully constructed musical. Memorable characters and musical score. As Patti Lupone once said, "The book stands on its own."
January 5, 2016
I have heard Gypsy referred to by many people I respect as one of the greatest pieces of theatre written in the 20th century, and after getting a chance to read the script for myself, I would have to agree. This story brings life to the historical figure that is Rose Louise Hovick (better known as Gypsy Rose Lee) and, surprisingly, makes us sympathize with her. It was both horrifying and understandable to see Louise accept the negative attention she ultimately gets as her infamous celebrity persona after years of being brushed aside and manipulated by her mother, Rose. However, I also sympathized with Rose because, all along, she was trying to prove her love for her daughter by pushing her into the spotlight, though it was frustrating how misguided she was in doing so. Laurents and Sondheim have created two brilliant character arcs for Louise and Rose that juxtapose each other and make Rose and Louise two truly complicated characters. Louise transforms from a timid young girl with no self confidence to a bold and well-known star, while Rose shifts from being a woman who is in full control of her daughters and herself to being completely alone and unsure of herself. One major issue I had was that I never felt any concern for the character of Herbie, Rose’s boyfriend and manager, nor did I really care about the fate of his relationship with Rose. I definitely feel like this portion of the story could have been fleshed out more, while some of the vaudeville performance sequences in the first act could have been trimmed down. I would still recommend this piece to anyone because it broke my heart, made me totally invested in the two main characters, layered its drama with moments of genuine humor, and left me with the unanswered question of whether Rose’s actions were selfless or selfish.
October 6, 2014
This is a musical that follows the life of Rose and her children. Rose is the ultimate stage mom that pushes her two children into to limelight and ultimately gets them in the vaudeville circuit. Years go by, and vaudeville is becoming less and less popular, and Rose and the act gets booked less and less. Rose's one daughter leaves to be married, so Rose is left with her less talented daughter, Louise. Rose tries to keep getting her acts, and they wind up being booked by a burlesque by accident. Louise sees the writing on the wall and decides to leave vaudeville to become a burlesque dancer, much to Rose's chagrin. Louise becomes 'Gypsy Rose Lee', and goes on to become famous.
My Thoughts: I was mainly reading this as my 'homework' as props desginer for a local theater. A little cheesey, a little predictable, filled with romance, drama, and fun-- your quintessential musical from this time period. Still, I am defintely lookitng forward to seeing the case enact this story, along with the cast using all the many things that I have to make and locate!! This show certainly has a lot of things I that I have to worry about, sheesh!!
My Thoughts: I was mainly reading this as my 'homework' as props desginer for a local theater. A little cheesey, a little predictable, filled with romance, drama, and fun-- your quintessential musical from this time period. Still, I am defintely lookitng forward to seeing the case enact this story, along with the cast using all the many things that I have to make and locate!! This show certainly has a lot of things I that I have to worry about, sheesh!!
July 10, 2013
Ahhhh, the quintessential stage mom. The standard by which all mothers of performers will be judged.The profile that is seared into the collective psyche. Rose is pushy, obnoxious, delusional, and self-centered. This is not to say that she doesn't love children; in fact she kidnaps a few to round out her cast. Almost everyone escapes her sphere of influence...including Louise.
People ask if I have had to deal with any stage moms, and Rose is hovering in their thoughts. Thank goodness I have not, as Rose is one of a kind.
The music is iconic, and is among the most recognized of musical theater. I must admit that I didn't know the soundtrack in its entirety until I downloaded it to accompany this reading. Wow.
People ask if I have had to deal with any stage moms, and Rose is hovering in their thoughts. Thank goodness I have not, as Rose is one of a kind.
The music is iconic, and is among the most recognized of musical theater. I must admit that I didn't know the soundtrack in its entirety until I downloaded it to accompany this reading. Wow.
October 27, 2010
I found this book fascinating. I saw this last production of Gypsy and thought it was brilliantly directed and so I really wanted to read this book by the director. I was surprised at some of the dirt he revealed. Surprised that the big shots in the business can be just as petty as the sort you meet in community theatre. It was an eye-opener for me.
January 16, 2014
Gypsy is somewhat tragic tale about a mother who never was able to make it in the spotlight who pushes her two daughters into the spotlight. This story was intriguing and tragic to me, but it wasn't the best play I've ever read either. However, I still enjoyed it, even through the tragic aspects of it.
July 16, 2014
It's an amazing script, with depth and warmth and humor. I made my theatrical debut as "The Balloon girl". Probably my finest acting ever, since I didn't have lines. Probably my very favorite musical.
October 26, 2012
One of the best written book musicals out there! Still a dream of mine to direct this some day!
March 26, 2013
It has a simple story, but it manages to show complex emotions. There is lots of drama and humor. Nice and lighthearted.
July 25, 2014
my uni put on a production of the play... needless to say i watched it twice and bought it after. so yeah i liked it.
December 28, 2014
I’ve never read a play before seeing it performed until now. I’m interested to see how it affects how much I like the story. Reading the play was just ok to me.
June 26, 2015
Awesome play!!! :)
August 6, 2015
One of the best books for a musical ever! I never get tired of reading it.
August 4, 2016
Should be required reading for all theatre moms and helicopter parents.
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