AUDRA'S TURN
Audra McDonald used the Tonys to grieve and confront.
Last weekend at the Tony’s, Audra McDonald delivered the 11 o’clock number of 11 o’clock numbers, with a version of “Rose’s Turn” from Gypsy that people cannot stop talking about. It was one of the rawest, most lacerating performances every delivered at the Tonys.
Gypsy has been performed by its leading ladies six times at the Tonys (twice by the same person). And comparing performances demonstrates just how rare and iconic was the moment that McDonald created.
Ready or not, Mr. Goldstone, here comes Rose.
ANGELA
Angela Lansbury, who starred in the 1974 revival of Gypsy, opened the 1989 Tonys singing “Everything’s Coming Up Roses.” And where (as we’ll see below), this song is absolutely terrifying in context, here the song is presented quite literally, with lights coming up, etc. to signal the start of the show.
Angela is a great performer, and the crowd clearly loves her. But as a Tony opener it’s a bit empty.
As it turns out, Angela peformed the same song at the 1975 Tonys, where she and the musical both won Tonys. There she was the final performance of the night, and once again, the song has been completely stripped of any context. It’s just Angela in a great dress giving us show biz.
ETHEL
While Ethel Merman didn’t perform Gypsy at the 1960 Tonys, becuase there were no performances at the Tonys back then, she did perform “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” on Perry Como’s show a few months later. And it’s an intersting comparison with Angela.
Once again, the song has been pulled completely out of context. But Merman is absolutely singing it to Louise, cheering her, then pushing her. Watching her grit her teeth as she says “Mama is gonna see to it” before going back to Happy Cheery Mama is amazing. And the ending, with lights playing in the background, is filled with the grief of a mother who has lost so much but has to believe the dream isn’t over.
Shockingly, neither Merman nor Gypsy won in 1960. Mary Martin won Best Actress for The Sound of Music. And Gypsy was beat out by Fiorello and The Sound of Music, which tied for best new musical.
TYNE
6 months after Angela sang at the ‘89 Tonys, Tyne Daly opened in a new revival of Gypsy. And though the show would be nominated for best revival (and won), and Daly was nominated for best actress in a musical (and won), the show did not perform at the Tonys.
But someone recorded Daly’s performance.
The thing that I find interesting about Tyne’s performance is how tough and knowing it is. Throughout the song, she delivers the hard show biz truths of the song like a manager talking to a dopey client (which perhaps captures her take on Mama Rose). When she imagines herself finally getting what she wants, she also gives unexpected bombshell energy. And at the end, her “for me”s are so filled with sadness. She’s begging the world to pay her back, to give her a life of her own.
BERNADETTE
In Bernadette Peters’ performance at the 2003 Tonys, we get our first and only other “Rose’s Turn”. And like her dress (and unlike some of the characters that she’s known for) it’s a remarkably restrained performance. In fact Bernadette’s Rose is probably the smallest of any of them, and another relatively balanced one. The staging (particularly the lighting) transitions us through the fantasy element at various stages of the song, but largely this Rose feels unexpectedly grounded.
PATTI
Five years later, at the 2008 Tonys, Patti LuPone delivered her own “Everything’s Coming Up Roses”. For the first time we get Rose is interacting with other performers. And with it, for the first time we see her as slightly unhinged. The way Rose grabs and throws Louise around, how her face fills with desperation and grief while she’s singing this cheery song. By the end she really is in a fantasy of her own.
There’s footage online of Patti doing “Rose’s Turn” in the actual musical. And it’s very interesting, too.
Unlike Bernadette, Patti begins furious and a bit wild. And almost immediately she descends completely into the fantasy of being the star herself—right down to her talking to the band, and them responding. She goes off the rails fast, but nevertheless you believe she could have been the star she dreams of. She’s a commanding performer.
Once she gets to “Why Did I Do It?”, a lot of the madness falls away to be replaced first by regret, and then by white hot fury. Unlike most versions, her end is not a fantasy sequence. It’s a demand.
AUDRA
And then there’s Audra.
Unlike every other version of Rose we’ve seen, Audra’s is from start to finish a mess. There is no attempt here to suggest that she could have ever been a star. She staggers around ranting, frequently leering. This is Rose at 3am after she’s had way too many drinks, and the bar staff is like, Lady, you gotta get the !%!% out of her. She is hideous.
But after she’s given us all that, she pulls back in the second half of the song and exposes this unexpected inner life of Rose, which is not built around rage or craziness but grief. If the first half of the song is the absolutely most insane that Rose has ever been on a Tony stage, the second half is by far the saddest. When she comes back to “Everything’s coming up Rose” at the end, the audience starts to cheers, as is usually the case, but what she’s delivering is so geniunely upsetting they quickly stop.
Everyone loves to talk about how many Tonys Audra has won, what a tremendous performer she is. She’s Broadway’s sweetheart. And that fact alone would have made her performance on Sunday astonishing. She could have given some version of the Audra people expect and love. But instead, in front of her peers and the world she delivered this deeply ugly, unsettling woman.
But more than that, she made Rose for the first time feel personal. There have been a growing number of revivals built around allowing people of color to replace what had originally been a white cast. (City Center just announced another, with Billy Porter to lead a Black revival of La Cage aux Folles.) In the case of Gypsy, people have been clamoring for Audra to get her shot for years. But on Sunday night she demonstrated just how much there is to be discovered in making Rose and her family Black. As she wonders “All your life, and what does it get you?” or she cries out, “Someone tells me, when is it my turn", it hits in a way it never has before. The whole second half of the song ends up a brutal interrogation of the American Dream, the opportunities some get that are withheld from so many others. In making Rose’s story her own, Audra made it about all of us in a way that no one ever has.
Right after her performance, Gypsy lost to Sunset Boulevard for Best Revival, and then Audra lost to Sunset’s Nicole Scherzinger. In the big picture this wasn’t a shock. People had been predicting it would be one of the two of them for months, and Scherzinger, too, has wowed audiences. But coming immediately after Audra’s performance, it felt like a confirmation of all the pain that poured out of her, all the dreams deferred forever.
It might not have been the Tony voters’ favorite female performance of the year, but it is definitely one of the most groundbreaking and revelatory Roses any of us will ever see.