Gypsy brings the house down at the Concordia
EVERYTHING’S certainly ‘Coming Up Roses’ for the Tinhatters with their latest production of Gypsy running at the Concordia until Saturday.
And blazing the trail was Caroline Luke as pushy Momma Rose, a woman aiming to take her two girls to the top of the American vaudeville tree.
She proved a fine actress and delivered the showstopping ‘Everything’s Coming Up Roses’ and ‘Some People’ with such passion that you could fully sense the drive and determination in her character.
The action starts when her two daughters are children and Katie Mann as Baby June and India Pryor as Baby Louise were both at the top of their game, as were all the youngsters who played minor parts in the early scenes.
As the girls grew up, Rose concentrated on making June the star, now played as an adult by the impressive Ashleigh Graham, while Louise played a peripheral role in the act.
Rose, after three unsuccessful marriages, meets Herbie, and persuades him to become their agent. Charley Alsop was perfect in this role and his duet with Rose of ‘Small World’ was a lovely moment.
As time goes on the act takes on three boys to back the girls up and George Phayre as Yonkers and Taylor Downs as LA offered good support.
Another neat piece of casting was of Damon Walsh as Tulsa who spotted the potential in Louise when he serenaded her with ‘All I Need Is The Girl.’
After several grinding years of little success on the road, and vaudeville passing its peak, June decided to run away and get married. But, far from being thwarted, Rose turns all her undoubted ambitions onto making Louise the star.
Becca Ward as Louise now started to come into her own, after being kept in the background and boy did she take her chance.
Everyone suddenly realised that the years of her and her sister pretending to be young girls had passed and they were very much grown up women with minds of their own.
Things come to a head, when the act, now starring Louise, is booked into a burlesque show and in order to keep her baby in showbiz, mum Rose, after much argument, decided to let her baby take the lead in the show with all that entails.
This leads to Herbie quitting both his professional and personal roles in disgust, but eventually Louise changes her name to Gypsy Rose Lee and becomes an overnight sensation.
But not before she is shown to strip and sashay in a great comical routine from Jacky Bingley as Mazeppa, Amy Mann as Electra and Lisa Harmlington as Tessie Tur, which brought the house down.
In the end, you were left realising that for all her pushing, it was Rose who needed the success more than anyone; but was the cost to her in personal terms really worth all the sacrifices?