Mainly on Directing

by Arthur Laurents

  That's how I laid it out for Patti. She had ideas of her own; they were tried, some incorporated, some not. But we knew where Rose had to go and that Patti would get her there. As she warned, she was slow. But once she got it in her gut and in her head, she had both the emotional electricity and the vocal dynamics to make the song chilling and thrill the audience every night so that they screamed as though on cue as the first-act curtain came down.

  Even the New York Times was knocked out by the “Roses Turn” she did at City Center. The third and last of Rose's big numbers, it invariably got a huge standing ovation from an audience of over two thousand—from the high-powered in the expensive, uncomfortable orchestra to Patti's fans in the cheaper, equally uncomfortable rear mezzanine and gallery. The last section of the song was particularly overwhelming. Boosted by a series of remarkable lighting effects by Howell Binkley, she tore savagely into those “For me! For me!”s, making a spectacular ending that was a catharsis for everyone. Nevertheless, I thought what she was doing was a collage that didn't really suit her, and that she could do much better; I wanted to do a new “Rose's Turn” for her.

  “Rose's Turn” is divided into three sections, the first designed to rock the house by having the star playing Rose shout out “Here she is, boys! Here she is, world! Here's Rose!” as the intro to a down-and-dirty version of a striptease, bumping and grinding as though to the manner born. From Merman on, every Rose scored in that segment, with one exception: Patti LuPone. She was uncomfortable trying to perform a version of the strip as her predecessors, each in her own distinctive style, had done to the delight of the audience wanting to see the equivalent of a star's underwear. There was no style that suited Patti. She was awkward and tentative; she didn't take to choreographed movement, thus she wasn't very good at it—or vice versa. She tried—Patti LuPone will always try—and Bonnie, who never gives up on anyone, smiled and cajoled and encouraged with makeshift adjustments. I put in my two or three cents. A collage, as I said, was the result: more than presentable, and Patti more than just got through the section. But what sufficed at City Center wouldn't at the St. James—not because it was for Broadway but because of what had happened to Patti's Rose.

  The new opening kitchen scene feeding a new “Some People” gave Rose new dimensions, as did the new act-ending railway-station speech catapulting her into a furious, frightening new “Everything's Coming Up Roses.” Patti LuPone, star performer, had metamorphosed into a mesmerizing Rose in a dazzling coat of many colors. That was the Rose I wanted in “Rose's Turn.”

  We had been doing the number more or less as it always had been done. Why not? It was the landmark eleven o'clock number of musical theatre. I hadn't given a thought to re-examining it as I had every other number in the show. Would I find something new if I did? Something deeper, richer—something Patti could use to make a “Rose's Turn” that was all her own as she had made the other numbers her own?

  I also didn't think her City Center “Rose's Turn” was good enough for this new Gypsy we were finding in rehearsal for Broadway, of all places. We sat around the table again, this time in a very streamlined rehearsal studio with big windows overlooking overbulbed and overcrowded Forty-second Street. The show was becoming even more extraordinary for Broadway than it had been at the relatively Off-Broadway City Center. The irony was lost on me, I was too wrapped up in the work, bursting with ideas coming from God knows where or why. Perhaps compensation for the loss of Tom, but the standard Higher Power would only compensate someone in a stratosphere of clouds and feathery wings. I was ninety years old, and maybe I was aging backwards, but my sole memory problem was trying to remember when I last had been so creative.

  A visual very often provides my impetus. With “If Momma Was Married,” it was Louise's hand held out to June. Re-examining “Rose's Turn,” it was an image of Rose in the paint-smeared smock she wore in all the backstages of her life. She was saying “Here's Rose,” but she wasn't ripping the smock open to reveal that red strip dress because she wasn't going to do a strip then. Her “Here's Rose” was mocking the whole notion. That broke the mold the number had been frozen in. I asked questions that hadn't existed before. Since Rose had ridiculed Louise as “a cheap stripper,” why would she do a strip herself? Obviously, she has to take a pass at doing one or reference it some way; that's how the number is written. But how would she really feel about doing it?

  When she angrily prowls the empty stage outside the star dressing room of the daughter who has no use for her, she rages: “I was born too soon and started too late!”—otherwise “I could have been better than any of you!”

  A better stripper? Is that what Patti LuPone's Rose would mean? Her Rose is bigger; her Rose wants more, wants bigger, wants the world! She has contempt for burlesque; she sneers at it and at Louise when she says: “Here she is, boys!” When she snarls “Here she is, world!,” the grandiosity of addressing the “world” tells us she's lost reality. “Here's Rose!” That's what she's been getting to: Rose! In lights—big, bright lights! Rose demanding to be looked at and seen because she is finally, at very long last, the Star she was always meant to be. That madness Patti LuPone could play with frightening intensity at different levels at will. And boy, did she!

  When the music changes for the strip, Rose switches in a flash to a sexual smile—of course she's sexy, no one's sexier—and opens the smock like a stripper, revealing that red dress. “Play it, boys!” she commands, and when she asks if they like what she shows them, the answering “Yes!” is from the whole world. She smiles and nods with disdain: of course they like it, she's got it. And then—candy for Patti—she switches again:

  Starting like June with “Hello, everybody! My name's”—June's gone, fury is back—“Rose!” That harsh “Rose” is a reminder of who commands the attention around here; but the next minute, the star is gone and she's a girl laughing, a little mad, joking, playing games, flirting sexually, reveling in letting loose any way she can think of, letting go—but the phrase “let go” trips her up, ends her frenzied joy, begins a downward spiral that yanks her back to Louise telling her mother she has got to “let go of [her]!” Once again, Rose is not needed; once again a daughter is lost. When June left, Rose was furious, but she could go on, she could start a new act. Without Louise, there's no place to go; she can do nothing, is nothing. Then why did she do it all? What did it get her?

  Everything changes: music, lights, setting, Rose. Self-examination turns “Rose's Turn” into an encapsulation of Rose's whole frustrated, angry life, which produces a breakdown, sending her completely over the edge. This is a “Rose's Turn” that uses everything Patti LuPone can dig up and keep digging into the longer she plays it; a “Rose's Turn” that everybody, without exception, stands up and cheers. You have to.

  When Rose gets richer, the other characters get richer and Gypsy gets richer. In this production, where all the actors interact with Rose to some degree, Patti couldn't change without every other actor changing—from Jim Bracchitta, both in the Jocko scene and in the burlesque house, to Sami Gayle and Bill Raymond in the kitchen scene, to Leigh Ann Larkin and Pearce Wegener in the hotel room, to Alison Fraser in the burlesque house, to the Farm-boys, the Toreadorables, to every single member of the company, because it's a company of actors. As at City Center, work was done regularly sitting around a table; the company, being that company, heard, saw and jilt what was happening to Patti and Boyd, to Patti and Laura, to Laura and Boyd. By second nature now, they dug deeper again, found more, invented more.

  It didn't seem that Laura and Tony Yazbeck could improve on their scene built around “All I Need Is the Girl,” but they did. It now existed on two levels, the literal and the metaphorical. The dream he ached for was for more than a girl—and enhanced immeasurably by her dream to be worthy of him. Everyone dreams for something; the number was now for everyone. Everyone hoping that Louise would get what she was yearning for had always been there, but Laura's yearning made the scene and song more moving—
which hadn't seemed possible.

  The biggest change in her performance came from something seemingly unconnected: Patti's new bows after “Rose's Turn.” Her bows had been done in a fashion gauged to bring off the trick devised so many years ago in London for Angela Lansbury. Those bows, however, were done by Angela as Rose and later by Tyne Daly as Rose. Patti's bows were done by Patti LuPone, Star—that's who bowed at City Center. This new Rose had to bow differently. What is such a great delight and so rewarding about working with Patti LuPone is that when she's challenged—in this case, to bow as her Rose would bow after having the triumph she believed she has deserved her whole life—she comes up with bows that are original, dazzling, funny, touching, and always true to the character.

  Those bows took us directly into another change I was after: playing the final scene between mother and daughter to make it clearly the climax of the whole play, as was always intended.

  The first line of the scene that follows the bows starts with a laugh because of the mood those demented bows have established. That laugh gives the illusion that the relationship between mother and daughter is in fine shape. Rose seems in control even with Louise gone and replaced by Gypsy Rose Lee, a powerful, glamorous woman. A bit distant, she's not threatening; she seems pleasant, amused by Rose's antics. It isn't too difficult for Rose to admit to her she did do everything for herself. But Rose's admission unintentionally changes the tone of the scene, for it has a profound effect on her daughter. When she asks “Why, Mother?,” it's Louise asking.

  “Just wanted to be noticed,” Rose says, trying to make light of it.

  When Louise, on the edge of tears, says, “Like I wanted you to notice me?,” meaning “Like I wanted you to love me,” we are at the climax of the evening. The point of Gypsy is made. What greater need for recognition is there than the need of the child for love from the parent?

  For the first time in her life, Rose faces what she has done to her daughter. Her horror that she completely failed her child destroys her. For the first time in the play, Rose is vulnerable: she cries. With Patti, it's a frighteningly believable breakdown that makes Rose a pitiable figure. Gypsy, who has made peace with what Rose put her through, says, “It's okay, Mother.” Then, seeing what the woman she feared for most of her life is reduced to, walks over to her to comfort her and says, “It's okay, Rose.” Daughter has become mother.

  Not for very long, though. Rose wasn't made to be an underdog of any kind. She chokes back her sobs, wipes away the tears, and is back in control, making jokes and conning Louise in style. Oh, she makes a small concession when she senses Louise might not be buying; but poor Rose!—what she doesn't sense or won't see is that it isn't Louise who is or isn't buying. Louise is gone permanently. Children leave their parents. It's Gypsy Rose Lee who walks away from Rose, laughing at Rose unchanged, still being Rose. Gypsy will take her mother to the party, she'll take care of her materially; but she's free of her—which is why she can laugh at Rose still trying to con her. Laura Benanti's amused laugh as Gypsy, not Louise, walks away was one of the memorable moments of the performance.

  It wasn't easy for Laura to do this. Her emotions are very close to the surface and she is extremely compassionate. Patti's breakdown affected her so much, she was in tears herself. She knew it was wrong—it was hard for her to kill the feeling—but she is an actress. She battled herself; an encouraging push and she gave a performance of Louise-into-Gypsy no one ever had before. It came to a head in the scene in Gypsy's dressing room where the two women have a knock-down-drag-out. It is now a shattering high point of the show because of two superb actresses at their best. Some particulars change from night to night, but the scene is always a killer. It's not easy for Laura to tell off someone she cares about. She does it, though, and at the peak, her body is trembling so much, she has to hold on to the dressing table to hold on to herself. Some nights, the toll it takes has her in tears; to stop them and get herself back into the toughness of Gypsy Rose Lee, she will slam her hand down on the table. But she is always Gypsy, it's always done honestly, and she is always grateful that she's playing the scene with Patti LuPone, who thrives on challenge so long as it's honest. Going all out in that scene is why Laura can play the last scene and play it with enormous subtlety.

  All of this and more developed in the rehearsal studio that for three weeks was ours. The big windows overlooked a Forty-second Street that was out of sight and mind; the security guards at the desk downstairs didn't ask for passes; dozens of backpacks had unassigned permanent places behind the line of production tables, and I was on creative speed. Three weeks! The whole City Center production, from rehearsal to opening night, was done in three weeks. On that memorable closing night, I had a fresh look at the show—if you can call coming back after not seeing three performances a fresh look. The intensity of anticipation in the crowd in front of the theatre, in the lobby, in the aisles before the performance was startling. Merely lowering the house lights brought pandemonium, and the performance didn't disappoint. I sat there, swept along with the audience, marveling at what was on the stage. But even then, the cold eye I can never close when watching my own work was seeing what I hadn't until then: missed moments, some of them big, that needed work, to put it politely. Unfinished work is never finished; happily, though, evidenced by this performance, the work that had been done had taken the show farther than I dreamed. Now it was over; the show was closing. I stowed the moments in my attic and gave myself to enjoying the night.

  But it didn't close. We went back into rehearsal; the unfinished work was finished; new moments, big and small, were changed and invented. Now we were ready for the new work to be seen.

  The producers had taken a financial risk in bringing Gypsy back to Broadway less than five years after the Mendes version. I invited them first to the run-through in the rehearsal studio before we moved into the theatre. The note in my journal for that day reads:

  “Run-through. Producers, designers and John. [John was John Barlow, Gypsy's press representative who is obsessed with musicals but backs it up by knowing more about musicals than almost anyone professionally connected to them or anyone who writes about them professionally.] All thrilled. Steve also there. Well, Steve.”

  Translation: with the exception of Steve, everyone at the run-through was flabbergasted, dazzled, amazed—not only that the performance was richer and so much deeper than it had been at City Center but that it was even possible to be richer and go deeper. John hugged me, shook his head, and said, “What you've done is incredible!” I held that in my head all during Steve.

  Steve, of course, is Stephen Sondheim, never exactly bursting with enthusiasm for Gypsy—even less for West Side Story. Understandable: he wrote only lyrics for those two shows; his enthusiasm, his caring is for all the shows he wrote the music for as well. He had liked the production at City Center, with reservations. Perhaps affected by a room reverberating with acclaim, he liked the new Gypsy a little better, also with reservations.

  When a musical moves from the rehearsal hall to the theatre, the director warns the company to be prepared for the performance to fall apart. With Gypsy, no one was prepared for the total screw-up by the self-styled Technical Director. At City Center, the few pieces of minimalist scenery—doors, for example—were moved by actors or stagehands. At Broadway's St. James Theatre, the doors were automated. That meant they came on when and where they weren't supposed to and couldn't be stopped. The party line is that computerized automation may take a little longer to get the moves right, but once they are, they're set for the run of the show. Really? Have you ever heard of a computer that didn't break down?

  That wasn't the worst problem. The stage-left curtain swags that were part of the portal would suddenly sway as though windblown and bang into the ROSE sign, sometimes so hard that a bulb from the sign would crash on stage and break. One night during previews, four bulbs came crashing down as the curtain went up on the second act with Patti on stage. Not missing a line, she got a bro
om from off stage and managed to sweep off all the broken glass before Laura and the Toreadorables had to get down on the floor for their number. An uninhibited delight, Patti LuPone: the star as cleaning lady.

  But what caused the curtains to sway? By the time that had been solved thanks to Paul Libin, the caring man who runs the St. James, the Technical Director had been replaced and all was fine— almost. The host of stage problems had prevented us from getting through the whole show without stopping and oh my god, here it was, dress rehearsal for our first Broadway audience.

  The audience for that dress is invited, which means it's not a real audience, which means that while the actors are nervous, they're hopped up on adrenaline. They know the audience is largely fans and friends plus a few—inevitable on Broadway— schadenfreuders. Many in the invited audience that night had seen the City Center Gypsy at least once. They weren't prepared for what they saw at the St. James; I was less prepared for how they reacted. The response to the new tone set by the new Rose Patti played in the kitchen scene and her “Some People” was wild enthusiasm; it kept getting wilder and wilder until the cumulative effect of the battle in Gypsy's dressing room, “Rose's Turn,” the bows, and the new last scene blew the roof off the theatre.

  That wasn't a real audience, however. The next night was our first preview. People were paying; there were the LuPonistas, of course, but it could be considered close to a real audience. The roof was blown off early—they got this was a new Rose and they went mad for her—and the roof stayed off. All during the previews, we kept rehearsing; we even got back to that table. There were small changes that had a big effect. As fine as Boyd Gaines's Herbie had been, as much as he had held the play together, he had not been quite equal to Rose and Louise and as layered a character as they were until the previews. Then all the subtleties in his per-formance—Herbie's relationship to the daughter he wanted and the woman he loved—became clear and so strong and affecting that the audience burst into applause mid-scene. Most important of all, Herbie was finally aware of who he was and what he needed, and that changed the course of the second act.