Gypsy (Play)

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    Natalie Dessay Stars With Her Daughter in a French ‘Gypsy’

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    The soprano Natalie Dessay and her daughter, Neïma Naouri, team up to explore one of theater’s most toxic mother-daughter relationships.That “Gypsy” is finally making its debut in France would be noteworthy enough: It took 66 years for one of the most acclaimed works in the musical-theater canon to get there.But there is an extra twist.The production running Thursday through Saturday at the Philharmonie de Paris stars the soprano Natalie Dessay and her daughter, Neïma Naouri, as Rose, the stage mother to end all stage mothers, and Louise, Rose’s long-suffering older child.“Well, that’s acting,” Dessay, 59, said when asked if there was baggage involved with bringing the show’s psychodrama to life with her daughter. “I can play the evil witch and she can play Snow White — it’s theater.”“Yes,” Naouri, 26, interjected, “but sometimes you lose yourself in the character, and I can’t tell the difference between reality and fiction.”They laughed before Dessay jumped back in. “It’s not any more complicated than anything else,” she said. “But above all it’s more pleasant since we know each other very well and we already have this mother-daughter relationship, so we don’t have to create it. We actually have fun with it.”Their bond was clear in a joint video conversation from France as the pair huddled over a phone — Naouri had helped her mother turn on the camera — keeping an animated banter going the entire time.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Merle Louise Simon, a Sondheim Mainstay, Is Dead at 90

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      She originated roles in four of his Broadway musicals between 1959 and 1987, and won a Drama Desk Award for her performance in “Sweeney Todd.”Merle Louise Simon, an award-winning stage actor and the only person to play roles in the original Broadway productions of four Stephen Sondheim musicals, died on Jan. 11 in Lake Katrine, N.Y., in Ulster County. She was 90.Her daughter Laura Simon confirmed the death, in a nursing home.Ms. Simon — who worked for most of her career under the name Merle Louise — began her run in Sondheim shows with “Gypsy,” in 1959, and continued with “Company” (1970), “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” (1979) and “Into the Woods” (1987), Mr. Sondheim and James Lapine’s interpretation of fairy tales. (Mr. Sondheim wrote the lyrics for “Gypsy” and the music and lyrics for the other shows.)Ms. Simon in 1987, in the Broadway production of the Sondheim musical “Into the Woods.”Martha Swope, via Billy Rose Theatre Division/New York Public Library“Steve had a real history with Merle,” Mr. Lapine, who directed Ms. Simon in three roles, including the Giant in “Into the Woods,” said in an email. Mr. Sondheim, he added, “loved the energy she brought to the rehearsal room and the stage. Merle was usually the smallest person in the room but always the most ebullient and with the most glorious voice.”When “Gypsy” opened, Ms. Simon had a minor role. But she was promoted in early 1960 to be the understudy to the actress playing June, one of two daughters pushed into show business by their ambitious mother, Rose, played by the powerhouse Ethel Merman.Soon after becoming the understudy, Ms. Simon went on for the actress in the role, who was ailing, and ended up becoming the full-time June.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Yesterday’s Broadway Warhorses, Saddled With Today’s Concerns

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      Revivals of “Romeo and Juliet,” “Our Town,” “Gypsy” and “Sunset Boulevard” aim to show that rethinking for the present is what makes classics classic.Two cheers for new voices! Of the 16 productions scheduled to open on Broadway between now and the end of the year, 12 are new to the Boulevard of Broken Budgets.But I’d like to reserve a third cheer for the fall’s four revivals, which may get less attention, having been this way before, but are likely to earn their keep if history holds true. Old voices are, after all, where new voices come from. And though 240 years separate the Broadway debuts of “Romeo and Juliet” and “Sunset Boulevard,” with “Our Town” and “Gypsy” in between, they all have much in common, at least in their continued haunting of theatergoers’ imaginations.That haunting arises, in part, from our memories of past stars who hover alongside the new ones. In “Our Town,” Henry Fonda and Paul Newman will be whispering the Stage Manager’s lines to Jim Parsons. Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury and Patti LuPone will no doubt watch over Audra McDonald as she takes on the role of Rose in “Gypsy.” LuPone will also be looking over Nicole Scherzinger’s shoulder in “Sunset Boulevard”; presumably keeping a safe distance, so will Glenn Close. And though few are likely to remember Robert Goffe, the original Juliet, he too will be felt on Broadway this fall. However long ago, the part was built on him.But revivals of shows like these have more to offer than ghosts. There’s a reason, aside from name recognition, that they keep coming back. Though products of vastly different times and cultures, they dig so deep into their specific truths that they reach a common, eternal one, from which many others may spring.Perhaps that’s most evident in “Our Town,” Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play about two families whose ordinary life events, from birth to death, are consecrated by a kind of communal love. The director Kenny Leon said that in his production, “1936 runs into 2024,” allowing the story to serve “as a metaphor for our world, for our country, even our time.”Paul Newman in a 2002 production of “Our Town.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHenry Fonda in a 1969 production of “Our Town.”Everett CollectionWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      28 Broadway and Off Broadway Shows to See This Fall

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      New York stages are welcoming Robert Downey Jr., Adam Driver, Audra McDonald and more this season.New York City stages are gearing up for a starry fall, with Robert Downey Jr. making his Broadway debut, Marisa Tomei and Jane Krakowski doing new plays, Adam Driver and Kenneth Branagh leading revivals, and Audra McDonald and Nicole Scherzinger stepping into two of the juiciest roles that musical theater has to offer. The overall abundance — on and Off Broadway — is cheering: Even away from the sparkle of celebrity, there are plenty of tempting shows by plenty of artists we’d be lucky to be in the room with.Broadway‘McNEAL’ Robert Downey Jr. makes his Broadway debut in this new drama by the Pulitzer Prize winner Ayad Akhtar (“Disgraced”), playing an esteemed novelist with a potentially dicey interest in artificial intelligence. This Lincoln Center Theater production, directed by Bartlett Sher, has a cast that includes Andrea Martin and Ruthie Ann Miles; Downey appears both live onstage and in a two-dimensional “metahuman digital likeness.” (Sept. 5-Nov. 24, Vivian Beaumont Theater)‘THE HILLS OF CALIFORNIA’ Jez Butterworth and Sam Mendes had a hit with their last Broadway collaboration, “The Ferryman.” Now they’ve teamed up for this time-toggling Butterworth play about four English sisters whose mother raised them in the 1950s to have showbiz dreams, and who return home in the 1970s as she is dying. Laura Donnelly, a star of “The Ferryman,” leads the capacious cast. (Sept. 11-Dec. 8, Broadhurst Theater)Laura Donnelly, at the piano, leads the cast of Jez Butterworth’s “The Hills of California.”Mark Douet‘YELLOW FACE’ David Henry Hwang’s 2007 satire stars Daniel Dae Kim (“Lost”) as a fictional version of the playwright, navigating anti-Asian racism in the theater and culture, while — whoops — mistakenly casting a white actor in an Asian role. In 2018, The New York Times named this comedy one of the 25 best American plays of the previous 25 years. Leigh Silverman directs this Roundabout Theater staging. (Sept. 13-Nov. 24, Todd Haimes Theater)‘OUR TOWN’ Kenny Leon brings Thornton Wilder’s microcosmic drama back to Broadway, starring Jim Parsons (“The Big Bang Theory”) as the Stage Manager. Zoey Deutch and Ephraim Sykes play the young lovers, Emily Webb and George Gibbs, with Richard Thomas and Katie Holmes as Mr. and Mrs. Webb; Billy Eugene Jones and Michelle Wilson as Dr. and Mrs. Gibbs; and Julie Halston as Mrs. Soames. (Sept. 17-Jan. 19, Barrymore Theater)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Audra McDonald to Star in ‘Gypsy’ Revival on Broadway This Fall

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      The six-time Tony-winning actress will play musical theater’s most famous stage mother in a production directed by George C. Wolfe.Audra McDonald has been dreaming of “Gypsy” since she was a 10-year-old in Fresno, Calif., with a small part in a dinner theater production of the musical. She played one of the children in a vaudeville act called “Uncle Jocko’s Kiddie Show,” and ever since, she said, “Gypsy” has remained “very much alive in my brain.”McDonald, who has won more competitive Tony Awards than any other performer in history, has for years been thinking about the show’s main character, a domineering stage mother named Rose. She has even sung from the musical’s score at some of her concerts.Now, McDonald, 53, will play Rose in a Broadway revival of “Gypsy” opening later this year.“It’s one of the great roles in musical theater, and I’ve always thought maybe some day I could try it,” McDonald said in an interview. “It scares me to death, but I certainly feel old enough now, and having experienced motherhood, perhaps I have what is needed to dive in and explore her and all that she is.”The production, directed by George C. Wolfe and choreographed by Camille A. Brown, is to begin previews on Nov. 21 and open Dec. 19 at the Majestic Theater, which has been under renovation since last year’s closing of “The Phantom of the Opera.” (That show ran there for 35 years.)“Gypsy,” first staged on Broadway in 1959, is inspired by the memoir of Gypsy Rose Lee, a stripper who reflects on her relationship with her mother. The musical’s Rose is ravenously hungry for fame for her daughters, or maybe for herself. The role was originated by Ethel Merman, and has since been played on Broadway by Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Linda Lavin, Bernadette Peters and Patti LuPone, on film by Rosalind Russell and on television by Bette Midler.McDonald said she sees “Gypsy,” which features music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by Arthur Laurents, as “a perfect musical” and called Rose a “deeply flawed and brilliantly alive character.” She recalled that in a 1989 review in The New York Times, Frank Rich wrote, “‘Gypsy’ is nothing if not Broadway’s own brassy, unlikely answer to ‘King Lear.’”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Angela Lansbury Will Receive Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement

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      The star of stage, film and screen has already won five competitive Tony Awards, and starred in several Stephen Sondheim musicals.Angela Lansbury, an acclaimed and beloved star of stage, film and television, will be honored this year with a special Tony Award for lifetime achievement.Lansbury, 96, who has already won five competitive Tony Awards, will receive the lifetime achievement award on June 12, when this year’s ceremony is set to take place at Radio City Music Hall and to be broadcast on CBS.Lansbury first appeared on Broadway in 1957, in a farce called “Hotel Paradiso,” and in 1964 she starred in her first Broadway musical, “Anyone Can Whistle,” a flop that is remembered mostly because the songwriter was Stephen Sondheim.She was already a three-time Oscar nominee, notably for “The Manchurian Candidate” in 1962, when she landed her breakout Broadway role, starring as the free-spirited title character in “Mame” in 1966. She won her first Tony Award for that performance. More