AUDRA’S TURN AS ROSE
Six-time Tony Award Winner Audra McDonald returns to Broadway this fall, 2024, taking on what is widely regarded as the greatest role in musical theatre, “Rose” in Gypsy. This upcoming revival will be directed by the legendary five-time Tony Award-winning Director George C. Wolfe with choreography by four-time Tony Award nominated Camille A. Brown. The book is by Tony Award Winner Arthur Laurents, music by Jule Styne, and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Additional casting and creative team members will be announced at a later date.
Performances will begin Thursday, November 21, 2024, at Broadway’s newly renovated Majestic Theatre (245 West 44th Street) and will open on Thursday, December 19, 2024. For tickets, visit Gypsy/Broadway or Telecharge,
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“When we began this journey we had the specific dream of pairing Audra McDonald with George C. Wolfe in a musical deemed by many to be the greatest. Sometimes the theatre gods smile upon us. This is one such time.” said producers Tom Kirdahy and Mara Isaacs.
According to The New York Times, “Audra McDonald has become to the American theater what Meryl Streep is to film — a star of unstinting polish and versatility. Ms. McDonald embosses any production in which she appears with a good-value guarantee.” GYPSY reunites George C. Wolfe, whom The New Yorker calls “a titan of the American theatre,” with Audra McDonald, after their collaboration on the 2016 Tony-nominated production of Shuffle Along, or, The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed. This month, George C. Wolfe will receive the 2024 Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre.
GYPSY has been lauded by critics and musical theatre fans alike as the greatest musical of all time, the ultimate backstage tale of an ambitious stage mother fighting for her daughter’s success – while secretly yearning for her own.
”GYPSY tapers off from perfection in the first act to mere brilliance in the second.” – Kenneth Tynan, The New York Yorker – 1959
“Everything about GYPSY is right. The Jule Styne score has a lilt and a surprise to it. The music bounces out of the pit, assertive, confident, and cocky, and has a love affair with Stephen Sondheim’s elegantly paced, daringly phrased lyrics. And then there is the book by Arthur Laurents. Rose is possibly one of the few truly complex characters in the American musical. Yes, the show has everything going for it. GYPSY is one of the best musicals and it improves with keeping. – Clive Barnes, The New York Times – 1974
“I’ve always had only one choice in the category of favorite musical. It is GYPSY. This show actually keeps improving with age. A wrenching fable about a tyrannical stage mother and the daughters she both champions and cripples – yet also a showcase for one classic Jule Styne-Stephen Sondheim song and rousing Jerome Robbins vaudeville routine after another – GYPSY is nothing if not Broadway’s own brassy, unlikely answer to King Lear. It speaks to you one way when you are a child, then chases after you to say something else when you’ve grown up. Like Lear, it cannot be done without a powerhouse performance in its marathon parental role.” – Frank Rich, The New York Times – 1989
“I was more persuaded than ever that GYPSY is one of the most enduring creations of the American theater, its scenes are as punchy as the vaudeville routines of its milieu, as relentless as Rose herself, pushing the story ahead in jump cuts to the punctuation of what may be the most seductive show tunes ever written.” –Frank Rich, The New York Times – 2003
“The American musical’s most daunting maternal role: Momma Rose, the ultimate stage mother in the ultimate backstage show.” – Ben Brantley, The New York Times – 2003
”It holds up the way Citizen Kane holds up. Every scene is juicy. The characters are vivid. The songs are sharp and entertaining. You can’t get bored in Citizen Kane, and you can’t get bored in GYPSY.” – Stephen Sondheim, 2003
“Styne’s score is one of the best for any show ever.” – Ben Brantley, The New York Times – 2008
Since GYPSY premiered on Broadway in 1959, starring Ethel Merman, many of the greatest performers in Broadway history have taken on the iconic role of “Rose”: Angela Lansbury in 1974, Tyne Daly in 1989, Bernadette Peters in 2003, and Patti LuPone in 2008. Now… it’s Audra’s turn.
BIOGRAPHIES
AUDRA McDONALD is unparalleled in the breadth and versatility of her artistry as both a singer and an actor. The winner of a record-breaking six Tony Awards, two Grammy Awards and an Emmy, in 2015 she was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people and received the National Medal of Arts—America’s highest honor for achievement in the field—from President Barack Obama. In addition to her Tony-winning performances in Carousel, Master Class, Ragtime, A Raisin in the Sun, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess and Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill—the role that also served as the vehicle for her Olivier Award-nominated 2017 debut in London’s West End—she has appeared on Broadway in The Secret Garden; Marie Christine (Tony nomination); Henry IV; 110 in the Shade (Tony nomination); Shuffle Along, or, The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed; Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (Tony nomination); and Ohio State Murders (Tony nomination). On television, she was seen by millions as the Mother Abbess in NBC’s “The Sound of Music Live!,” won an Emmy Award for her role as host of PBS’s “Live From Lincoln Center,” and received Emmy nominations for “Wit,” “A Raisin in the Sun” and “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill.” Having played Dr. Naomi Bennett on Shonda Rhimes’s “Private Practice” (ABC) and Liz Reddick (formerly Lawrence) on both “The Good Wife” (CBS) and “The Good Fight” (Paramount+), she may now be seen as Dorothy Scott on Julian Fellowes’s “The Gilded Age” (HBO). On film, she has appeared in Seven Servants, The Object of My Affection, Cradle Will Rock, It Runs in the Family, The Best Thief in the World, She Got Problems, Rampart, Ricki and the Flash, Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast, the movie-musical Hello Again, Cinergistik’s documentary Whitney Houston in Focus, the Obamas’ Higher Ground Productions’ Rustin and MGM’s Aretha Franklin biopic, Respect. McDonald is a Juilliard-trained soprano, whose opera credits include La voix humaine and Send at Houston Grand Opera, and Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at Los Angeles Opera, where the resulting recording earned her two Grammy Awards. She has issued five solo albums on the Nonesuch label as well as “Sing Happy” with the New York Philharmonic on Decca Gold. She also maintains a major career as a concert artist, regularly appearing on the great stages of the world and with leading international orchestras. She is a founding member of Black Theatre United, board member of Covenant House International, and prominent advocate for LGBTQIA+ rights, whose favorite roles are those performed offstage, as an activist, wife to actor Will Swenson, and mother.
GEORGE C. WOLFE’s theatre directing credits include The Iceman Cometh; Shuffle Along, or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed (New York Drama Critics Circle Award and Drama Desk Award for Best Musical); Lucky Guy; Gary; A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, The Normal Heart (Drama Desk); Jelly’s Last Jam (Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Award); Angels in America: Millennium Approaches (Tony Award and Drama Desk) and Perestroika (Drama Desk); Bring in da Noise, Bring in da Funk (Tony and Drama League Award); Topdog/Underdog (Obie Award); Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (Drama Desk); Elaine Stritch at Liberty (Tony for Special Theatrical Event); The Tempest; The Wild Party; Caroline, or Change (Olivier Award Best Musical); and A Free Man of Color. From 1993-2005 Wolfe was the Producer of The Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival. He is the writer of the award-winning The Colored Museum, Shuffle Along, directed/adapted Spunk (Obie), and created Harlem Song for the Apollo Theatre. Wolfe directed and co-wrote the HBO film “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” as well as Lackawanna Blues, for which he earned The Directors Guild Award, a National Board of Review Award, a Christopher Award, and the Humanitas Prize. For Netflix, he directed “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”, which was nominated for 5 Academy Awards, and most recently “Rustin” (Gotham Award). He is the Chief Creative Officer of the Center for Civil and Human Rights and from 2009-2017 served on The President’s Committee for the Arts and The Humanities. Additional awards include the PEN Mike Nichols Writing Performance Award, Actors Equity Paul Robeson Award, Society of Directors and Choreographers Mr. Abbott and Callaway Awards, the Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award, the New Dramatists Outstanding Career Achievement Award, the NAACP Lifetime Achievement Award, the Lambda Liberty Award, the Spirit of the City Award, the Brendan Gil Prize, the Distinguished Alumni Award from NYU, a Princess Grace Award, the Monte Cristo Award and was inducted in the Theatre Hall of Fame. Wolfe was named a Library Lion by the New York Public Library and a living landmark by the New York Landmarks Conservancy. The Tony Awards Administration Committee recently announced that this June, George C. Wolfe will receive the 2024 Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre.
CAMILLE A. BROWN. Four-time Tony Award nominee, including a current nomination for her choreography in Hell’s Kitchen on Broadway, is a prolific Black female choreographer who in 2022, made her Broadway directorial debut for the Broadway revival of for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, making her the first Black woman to direct and choreograph a Broadway play since Katherine Dunham in 1955. The production received seven Tony Award nominations including Best Direction of a Play and Best Choreography for Brown. The New York Times proclaimed the production “triumphant.” The same season, at The Metropolitan Opera, Camille became the first Black artist to direct a mainstage production, co-directing alongside James Robinson on Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones (2021), which she also choreographed. Fire was triumphantly brought back to the MET again this 2024 spring season. Camille also choreographed Porgy & Bess in 2020 and Terence Blanchard’s Champion, which premiered April 2023, both at The MET Opera. Camille made her Broadway choreography debut with the critically acclaimed revival of Once on This Island, followed by Choir Boy for MTC. She continues to be the artistic director and choreographer for her own company, Camille A Brown and Dancers and this summer will premiere a new piece, the highly anticipated “I AM” at Jacobs Pillow. Most recently, Brown won the Chita Rivera Award for outstanding choreography and earned a Drama Desk nomination and her fourth Tony Award nomination for her choreography of the Broadway hit, Hell’s Kitchen, the new Alicia Keys musical which has garnered 13 Tony Award nominations.