Since I can only assume it will be with the same director I can't say I'm overly excited for this transfer. Staunton had the opportunity to be wonderful in the role but spoiled it by playing the entire show with the kind of intensity that should be reserved for only a small handful of scenes. A new director might be able to recognize what could be and change the course of her performance, but that seems unlikely to happen if Jonathan Kent is back at the helm.
I wonder if we'll ever get an age appropriate Mama Rose... A woman who believably has a ten year old child... instead of looking like her grandmother. If Imelda can play the role why not babs? Just saying...
I agree, I'm not sure WHY it is transferring? Is it for sure doing Broadway? Or is it maybe doing a St. Ann's Warehouse, etc type thing? I just don't seeing it being commercially viable on Broadway. But if it's coming over for like 6 months, I can understand that. I just didn't think the production itself was all that marvelous. Her performance was interesting, but the actual physical production felt a little too slick.
This was terrible acted production and just lose money in America. I hope they rethink this awful idea. I saw the filmed version and it is a poor version of the superb never to be outdone 2008 Broadway revival with three incredible actors full of nuance and real complex characters and acting. The recent British production was 2 dimensional and ridiculous. I have no doubt they loved it on the West End but it will bomb bringing it to America.
Her age doesn't bother me at all, it's the psychosis she plays from start to finish that comes off forced and unpleasant. Also,the weakened choreography, weakened orchestrations, and claustrophobic physical production really does not make me want to see this transfer.
I rewatched the film on the PBS rebroadcast. One thing that struck me as off from the start was during "Some People" when she distastefully mugged "Miss Blueberry Pie" in the exact manner she was coaching June. Granted, part of Rose is her insistent blindness to her actions, but that expression communicated she was sick of the schtick and considered it fake.
I'm far from the position of becoming an accredited investor and will never be in the position to do so, but if I were, this is NOT something that I'd expect to make money.
It was great in the theatre. Absolutely great. The favorite of all of the Roses I've seen (Lansbury, Daly, Peters, Buckley and Lupone). Her performance was not modulated for the TV cameras, and it doesn't have the same magic. Not sure who else they would bring over, but with an American cast surrounding her, I wouldn't be so quick to snub it.
Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.
I couldn't believe just how painfully unfunny this was since Staunton's comedy on the SWEENEY recording is top notch. I thoroughly hated everything about her performance on the PBS broadcast, the singing, the mugging, the total lack of chemistry with everyone else on stage. And Pulver's Louise was just as unremarkable. What a waste of a revival when so many incredible American actresses would knock this out of the park.
"Some people can thrive and bloom living life in a living room, that's perfect for some people of one hundred and five. But I at least gotta try, when I think of all the sights that I gotta see, all the places I gotta play, all the things that I gotta be at"
I still can't see why anyone -- including non-profits -- would invest significant bucks to showcase someone who most people this side of the pond have no desperate yearning to see as Rose. If I am ever going to see Gypsy again -- it is one of my favorites, but I am really OD'ed on Gypsy right now -- it had better have someone risky like (and don't discount them so quickly) Kristen Chenoweth (who I think could be great), Audra MacDonald, Idina Menzel, Sutton Foster, each of whom has the native talent to pull off the role...and all of whom would be a lot more age appropriate 5 years from now than Imelda is today. And I agree with the person who requested that just once we have an age appropriate Rose in the role, someone in her 40s, instead of (god forbid) someone in her 70s or, in the case of Imelda, I assume well into her 50s.