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Gypsy

Gypsy
Your Price: $20.95 CDN
Author: Arthur Laurents
Lyrics by: Stephen Sondheim
Music by: Jule Styne
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
Format: Softcover
# of Pages: 108
Pub. Date: 2009
ISBN-10: 1559360860
ISBN-13: 9781559360869

About the Play:

Gypsy is a full-length musical with book by Arthur Laurents, music by Jule Styne, and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Indomitable stage mother Rose chases vicarious success and stardom as she pushes her daughters through the vaudeville circuit. When Baby June flees the act to elope, Rose vows to make introverted Louise into a star. Cherished for generations, Gypsy is regarded by many theatre professionals as the finest musical ever created.

Gypsy is the ultimate tale of an ambitious stage mother fighting for her daughters' success - while secretly yearning for her own. Set all across America in the 1920s and 30s, when vaudeville was dying and burlesque was born, it is the story of a domineering stage mother's inadvertent creation of a burlesque stripper (suggested by the memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee). Arthur Laurents' landmark show explores the world of two-bit show business with brass, humor, heart, and sophistication. Gypsy was the second Broadway smash for Stephen Sondheim and his West Side Story collaborator Arthur Laurents, and yet another success for composer Jule Styne. It introduced such standards as Let Me Entertain You and Everything's Coming Up Roses and has, in its many incarnations, starred Ethel Merman, Rosalind Russell, Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Bernadette Peters, Patti Lupone as well as, Bette Midler.

Gypsy opened in 1959 at The Broadway Theatre in New York City, transferred to the Imperial Theatre, and closed in 1961 after over 700 performances. After four triumphant Broadway revivals, a successful Hollywood film adaptation, a US national television broadcast and innumerable productions worldwide, Gypsy is often cited as having the best book of any show.

Cast: 6 female, 2 male

What people say:

"Best damn musical I've seen in years!" — New York Herald Tribune

"Genius! ...Mr. Laurents fought to place the figure of Rose, the stage mother to end them all, at the center of the show. As a result Gypsy became a musical that anatomizes the pathology of ambition and the need for love with a trenchant humor that makes the show as vividly alive today as it was when it opened in 1959." — New York Times

About the Playwright:

Arthur Laurents (1917-2011) was an American playwright, stage director and screenwriter. After writing scripts for radio shows after college and then training films for the U.S. Army during World War II, he turned to writing for Broadway, producing a body of work that includes the books for two true classics of musical theatre, Gypsy and West Side Story. His screenplays include Rope for Alfred Hitchcock, and one of Hollywood's most well-known romances, The Way We Were.

Stephen Sondheim (1930-2021) was an American composer and lyricist known for his immense contributions to musical theatre for over 50 years. His musical compositions and lyrics earned him a Pulitzer Prize, an Academy Award, and numerous Tonys among other awards and honours. Described by Frank Rich of The New York Times as "now the greatest and perhaps best-known artist in the American musical theater."

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