Review: Everything Is Coming Up GYPSY!

A cast of accomplished Valley stage veterans (Debra Qualtire and Terry Gadaire) and aspiring young actors delivered a valiant opening night performance of GYPSY at Tempe Center for the Arts. One hopes that, by their final performance on August 23rd, their hard work will be rewarded by major corrections in the production's technical aspects. There is too much talent and substance invested in staging a classic of this magnitude for director David Hock to abide one more minute of sloppy sound effects and delayed scene changes, which, in turn, may have prompted some of the cast's lapses in the timing or remembrance of their lines.

Scottsdale Musical Theater Company has a well-established record of putting on quality shows, so I'll consider the opening night jitters and stumbles an anomaly.

Certainly, the audience, comprised of avid supporters of the cast and the company, enjoyed the timeless tunes of Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim and relished the tenacious efforts of Rose (Qualtire), the prototypical stage mother, to launch her daughters, June (Madison Ottinger) and Louise (Sarah Cassidy) on the path to stardom, ironically as vaudeville is breathing its last breaths.

Mr. Gadaire delivered his usual level of excellence as Herbie, Rose's erstwhile agent, waiting in the wings for Rose to let go of her dreams and settle down.

The interactions between Rose and her daughters could stand some fine tuning and more work on character development. If, as one critic once opined, Rose is Broadway's "brassy, unlikely answer to King Lear," then SMTC's Rose needs more thorns, more metal, more demonstrable intensity and angst. Likewise, as Louise defines herself and morphs into Gypsy Rose Lee, Ms. Cassidy needs to reveal, more subtly, the evolution from passive to active voice. It can be a marvelous stage moment when she seizes control of her identity and her life.

Tylar Talkington's set design and the backdrops by provided Royal City Musical Theatre add richly to the show, evoking an appropriate sense of time and place, as do the costumes from Music Theatre Wichita.

There's a lot of potential here that perhaps additional prep time and focused direction could have fulfilled. In the meanwhile, it is what it is, and, as community theatre, will likely give its audiences in this very short run something to applaud.

Photo credit to Zachary Youmans

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