Gypsy
Let me entertain you
Let me make you smile
Stephen Sondheim and Jule Styne collaborated to create “Gypsy,” based on stripper Gypsy Rose Lee’s autobiography. The show tells the story of the young Louise and her sister June, forced by their domineering mother, Rose, into show business. When favourite daughter June runs away to be married, Rose turns her attention to Louise, but is forced to realize that neither of her daughters need her anymore, as Louise has forged her own path out from her sister’s shadow, and become Gypsy Rose Lee, a famous stripper.
“Gypsy” opened on Broadway in 1959, with the incomparable Ethel Merman as Mama Rose. The show lives on in such songs as “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” “Let Me Entertain You,” and “Some People” and has been revived several times on Broadway with great success.
G.S.S.’s production of “Gypsy” came in 1984, soon after they presented “The Sound of Music,” which created an interesting set of problems. Besides having spent months teaching the actors and actresses how to behave as nuns and military officers, and now having to teach them to be strippers and vaudeville performers, the two actresses cast as Gypsy Rose Lee and Mama Rose had played Maria Von Trapp and the Mother Abbess in “The Sound of Music”!!! However, in no time at all everyone was in the mood and the show was fantastic.
