There’s something of the Mother Courage about Mama Rose. Like Bertolt Brecht’s play, in which a woman trades her way through the 30 years’ war in a primal effort to support her family, Gypsy is about a mother who acts out of economic necessity to keep her daughters alive. It is not a pretty tale.
In an embittered take on the American dream, the Arthur Laurents/Jule Styne/Stephen Sondheim musical shows the entrepreneurial spirit at its most extreme – and least rewarded. Mama Rose, the ultimate stage mother, drags daughters June and Louise from one vaudeville fleapit to the next, sustaining their tawdry act on self-belief alone.
When finally success arrives, it is in the most compromised of forms. As Louise morphs butterfly-like into Gypsy Rose Lee, trading nursery costumes for the silky layers of striptease, it is the marketplace of burlesque that triumphs. Mama Rose can take no pleasure in the fulfilment of her own ambition and, with a touch of King Lear, is left bewildered by the ascent of the next generation.
Like Mother Courage, Mama Rose is a bulldozer of a role. In Ben Occhipinti’s actor-musician driven production, Shona White plays her with the lippy patter of a 1940s movie, ruling the stage with hard-bitten brashness. Even when she belts out “Everything’s coming up sunshine and Santa Claus” she seems to sneer at the possibility of a happy ending.
It takes a while for the rest of the backstage world to settle around her. In the first half, even the liberties of musical theatre fail to persuade us we are watching a troupe of child actors. Their apparent maturity makes it hard to get the measure of their disquiet. Meanwhile, White’s dominance is at the expense of family dynamics; Patricia Panther, suitably enthusiastic as child-star June, has left the stage before the relationship with her mother has been properly established. Many of the jokes fail to land.
In the second half, things coalesce, with Ben Stock appearing noble and pliant as love interest Herbie, and Blythe Jandoo flourishing before our eyes as Louise. It is not an easy production to warm to, but there is no arguing with White’s barnstorming Rose’s Turn at the show’s end.
