Clear the decks! Clear the tracks! Gypsy is heading back to Broadway. The Golden Age musical first premiered on Broadway in 1959 as Gypsy: A Musical Fable and is loosely based on burlesque stripper Gypsy Rose Lee’s autobiography, Gypsy: A Memoir. Written by Arthur Laurents, the musical features music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, with original direction and choreography by Jerome Robbins. The show is so beloved it’s been revived on Broadway multiple times: 1974, 1989, 2003, 2008, and now again in 2024 — all at different theatres.
There’s no denying that Mama Rose is the most iconic stage mother of all time — and one of the most demanding roles in history. In the script, she’s addressed as Madame Rose and is desperately hungry for her daughters’ (June and Louise) chances at fame in the days of 1920s vaudeville. Nothing’s going to stop her until one of them becomes a star. The role is based on the real Rose Hovick, who was Gypsy’s mother.
Gypsy Is Coming Back to Broadway with Audra McDonald—Here’s What We Know
In honor of the latest staging, beginning previews on November 21 and directed by George C. Wolfe and choreographed by Camille A. Brown at the Majestic Theatre, we present a list of all the Mama Roses in Broadway history.
Ethel Merman
Sing out, Louise! Ethel Merman will forever be synonymous with Mama Rose as the first and perhaps the most famous Mama Rose of all time. She was known for her belt — and not wearing a microphone to project to the back of the theatre. “Since she acts the part of a woman of indomitable personality, she gives an indomitable performance both as actress and singer. Not since Annie Get Your Gun and Call Me Madam has she played a character of such concentrated vitality,” wrote New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson in his review. Merman, then 51, lost the Tony Award for best actress in a musical to Mary Martin in The Sound of Music.
Angela Lansbury
In 1974, Angela Lansbury, then 49, was the next Mama Rose on Broadway in the musical’s first revival and won a Tony Award for her portrayal. But at first she said no, telling NPR back in 2000, “I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’ I said, ‘I could no more approach that role having treasured the recording of Ethel Merman singing Rose. I know what’s required here, and I know what an absolutely tremendous, overpowering role it is. And I don’t think I’m up for it.’” It took a year before she agreed to do it, first in London and across North America prior to making her entrance down the aisle at the Winter Garden Theatre. Laurents directed. “Miss Lansbury is not really to be compared to Miss Merman; there’s no way of doing it,” read a review by Frank Rich in The New York Times. “What I was really marveling at the whole time was the expertise with which a potentially seedy show‐biz saga, ripe for raucous and campy treatment, had been ever so gently nursed into something infinitely richer. …” Before Gypsy, Lansbury had starred in several other shows, including Dear World and Mame.
Tyne Daly
By 1989, 30 years had passed since Gypsy first began entertaining audiences. Tyne Daly, then 43, who hadn’t been on Broadway in nearly 20 years, was the next actress cast as Mama Rose — this time at the St. James Theatre, followed by a move to the Marquis Theatre in 1991. Again, it was directed by Laurents. For most of the 1980s, Daly had starred on the TV show Cagney & Lacey. Before every performance, she took a voice class for 30 minutes. “Ms. Daly, a television actress who might seem inappropriate to the task, follows Angela Lansbury in proving that not even Ethel Merman can own a character forever,” Rich wrote in his NYT review. “Her vocal expressiveness and attack have their limits … but this fiercely committed actress tears into — at times claws into — Mama Rose.” She, too, won a Tony Award for her interpretation.
Bernadette Peters
Bernadette Peters took her turn in 2003 at the Shubert Theatre. The seeds had been planted years earlier in 1996, when Peters sang “Some People” in front of Sondheim and Laurents at her Carnegie Hall debut. Ahead of her opening night, some critics dismissed the idea that Peters, then 55, could pull it off, but later admitted they were wrong. “Playing a role that few people thought would ever fit her and shadowed by vultures predicting disaster, Bernadette Peters delivered the surprise coup of many a Broadway season in the revival of Gypsy,” wrote Ben Brantley in the NYT. “Working against type and expectation … Ms. Peters has created the most complex and compelling portrait of her long career, and she has done this in ways that deviate radically from the Merman blueprint.” Peters lost the Tony Award that season to Marissa Jaret Winokur in Hairspray, but treated the audiences at that year’s Tony Awards ceremony to her gut-wrenching rendition of “Rose’s Turn” that was followed by a standing ovation. Peters will return to Broadway this spring in Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.
Patti LuPone
Five years later, Patti LuPone became the oldest actress to play Rose on Broadway, at 59 years old. “It’s breath,” LuPone told Barbara Walters on The View about how she’s able to belt out song after song eight shows a week. The 2008 production, directed by Laurents once again, had transferred to the St. James Theatre after a production was mounted as part of City Center’s summer “Encores!” in 2007. “Ms. LuPone exudes a sweet-and-sweaty air of hope and desperation, balancing on an unsteady seesaw,” Brantley raved in his review. “While Rose may be a dauntingly single-minded creature, Ms. LuPone now plays her less on one note than any actress I’ve seen.” LuPone went on to win her second Tony Award for her portrayal. She most recently won a Tony Award for Company and currently stars in The Roommate at the Booth Theatre.
Audra McDonald
You either got it or you ain’t. The internet went crazy for months amid rumors that Audra McDonald, 54, would be the next actress to sing about egg rolls. The six-time Tony Award winner is the latest Broadway living legend often identified by first name only to put her stamp on the part at the Majestic Theatre. She’ll also be the first to masquerade down the theatre’s aisle since The Phantom of the Opera closed in 2023. After five Roses, McDonald is doing fine with the comparisons to her predecessors. “I’m at peace with it. None of them did it like any of the rest of them did it. So you can add another one to the pile!” she recently told Vogue. McDonald was last on Broadway in Ohio State Murders and been a series regular on The Gilded Age.