Gypsy - The 2008 Broadway Cast Recording

Time-Life Entertainment
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America has produced a plentiful number of fine musicals, but truly great musicals are understandably rare. They are the ones where every number is as good as, if not better than, the one before; where every number is different from every other one; and where all, taken together, encompass a complete, idiosyncratic yet universal, view of life.

Such a musical is the 1959 Gypsy, where everything not merely works, but sparkles, shines and dazzles even as it tickles the funny bone or elicits empathetic tears. I will not go into the plot, which must be almost as well known as that of Romeo and Juliet, and is loosely based on the autobiography of Gypsy Rose Lee, the most famous and most literate stripper of them all. Yet Arthur Laurents' book for the musical greatly improves on the story, without, however, any of that sentimentality that plagues so many specimens of the genre. It manages to make all the characters, from top to bottom, fervently alive and fiercely felt.

Now add to this the irresistibly enveloping music of Jule Styne, who here surpassed himself. Although there is an abundance of Broadway brass and sass in these tunes, there is also tenderness, wistfulness, joy and beautifully musicalized ache. Add to this the lyrics of Stephen Sondheim, then not yet 30, but already at the top of his formidable form. Here is wit galore, but also genuine emotion, and truth to character. And beyond that, rhymes that are as ubiquitous as they feel natural. Their skill sends a chill (it's catching!) of delight up and down the most insulated spine.

Take this beginning of Rose's anthem of wittily rebellious emancipation, and note the syncopation of inner rhymes and the smart wordplay on the word "living": "Some people can get a thrill/ Knitting sweaters and sitting still—/That's okay for some people/Who don't know they're alive!/Some people can thrive and bloom/Living life in a living room—/That's perfect for some people/Of one hundred and five."

The wonder of it is the letter-perfect melding of words and music, felicities intertwining like lovers' bodies in rapturous embrace.

Of course, onstage there is also the rhapsodic choreography of Jerome Robbins, which a disc can't reproduce. And yet the new 2008 Broadway cast recording has such depth and range as to almost conjure up visuals through mere sound.

There have been several Momma Roses since Ethel Merman created the role and sang it matchlessly. But Patti LuPone's singing is terrific too, and when it comes to acting with the voice (and I have seen both Roses) I think Patti may be even better. Helped by Laurents' direction of this revival, her performance, even on disc, reaches the heart, the mind and—dare I say it? —the marrow.

Now for her co-stars. No one (and I have seen them all) has ever been as winning a Herbie as Boyd Gaines, whose natural charm, elegance of spirit, and radiant humanity no mere absence of visuals can dim. Besides, there are some splendid pictures in the booklet.

Laura Benanti, who sounds as lovely as she looks, enacts the magical transformation from the touching chrysalis of Louise to the exultantly inveigling butterfly of Gypsy Rose with subtle yet transcendent artistry.

However, the entire cast could not be bettered, and neither could the expertise of the technicians who made this disc so thrillingly alive. Regretfully, I cannot single them all out, but I cannot pass over mentioning the masterly original orchestrations of Sid Ramin and Robert Ginzler, immaculately preserved here. Fascinatingly, we get besides the most nearly complete recording ever, several bonus tracks of numbers that did not make it into the show, but which, orchestrated here by the gifted Jonathan Tunick, would have been high points of almost any other musical.

A final word of praise for the booklet, with its copious and evocative pictures, as well as a charming essay by LuPone and a highly informative one by Steven Suskin, who also contributed a helpful synopsis.

Do not spare time, effort and money to catch, if you possibly can, the show as it is running on Broadway. But whether you do or don't, the disc will delight you no matter how many times you will surely replay it; what luck that a CD can take such wear without tear, and will, like the show itself, be enchantingly new on every rehearing.