| re: GYPSY - Angela Lansbury | |
| Last Edit: Delvino 10:13 pm EST 11/25/24 | |
| Posted by: Delvino 10:11 pm EST 11/25/24 | |
| In reply to: GYPSY - Angela Lansbury - theatreguy40 04:20 pm EST 11/25/24 | |
|
|
|
| Lansbury's Rose was my first. June 1973, London, a warm evening at the Piccadilly Theatre. I knew most of the much-covered songs in the score, and had seen parts of the film, but at 21, I thought it was a show (entirely) about a stripper. The lady who had a talk show. I wasn't remotely aware of the ways the show worked, or what kind of role the protagonist became by the end. It was to put it mildly ... an experience. And for context, that week in the West End, I saw Maggie Smith in Private Lives, Claire Bloom in A Doll's House, Glenda Jackson in a forgettable play by John Mortimer called Collaborators. But Lansbury's Rose, and the show itself, made the indelible impression. I later saw her at the Kennedy Center, twice. It's still my yardstick as much as my gold standard. Lansbury's Rose was somehow both theatrically enhanced yet entirely human-scaled, chilly and warm-blooded, maternal and at times shockingly devoid of a mother's empathy. It was a study in contradictions, a characterization that offered glimpses of universal experiences, the way the Greeks and Shakespeare first illuminated such lives. It changed forever my idea of musical theater. | |
| reply | |
|
|
|
| Previous: | re: GYPSY - Angela Lansbury - AlanScott 01:38 am EST 11/26/24 |
| Next: | re: GYPSY - Angela Lansbury - shaggyhair 08:59 pm EST 11/25/24 |
| Thread: | |
Time to render: 0.017175 seconds.