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March 28 (Bloomberg) — No matter how many times you've seen “Gypsy,'' you arguably haven't experienced it as fully as you may now on Broadway at the St. James Theatre. I think I have caught them all, starting with the legendary Ethel Merman in the premiere, but it is this one that has definitive written all over it.
In Patti LuPone's Mama Rose, Boyd Gaines's Herbie and Laura Benanti's Louise, the musical has that radiant nucleus around which everything else coalesces into a parade of delights. This is the “nec plus ultra'' of “Gypsy'' productions, than which I can imagine none greater.
You surely know this revered musical tells the fact-based tale of Rose, the stage mother from hell, and daughters June and Louise, whom she prodded and propelled into stardom as June Havoc and Gypsy Rose Lee.
Had Rose settled for her Seattle existence as a provincial, oft-divorced mother of two more or less stage-struck kids — June more, Louise less — the latter's memoirs could not have underlain the work of another great threesome: writer Arthur Laurents, lyricist Stephen Sondheim and composer Jule Styne.
But wait, make that a foursome: the late Jerome Robbins's choreography, reproduced by Bonnie Walker, continues to exert its death-defying seduction. The two major dance numbers — the “All I Need Is the Girl'' duet for the winsome Benanti and the dynamic Tony Yazbeck, and the furibund final solo, “Rose's Turn,'' for the breathtaking and show-stopping LuPone — are fusions of the balletic and dramatic at their story-telling best.
This production began last summer at the semi-staged Encores! Series at New York's City Center and reaches fully staged fruition here, with almost all participants returning, along with Patrick Vaccariello conducting the expert 25-piece orchestra.
Some problems do arise. At City Center, the orchestra had to be onstage, given what was essentially a concert performance. On Broadway, however, the orchestra should be in the pit, which is what the writing predicates and the public prefers. Yet it is again onstage, mostly hidden by a scrim. Also, the concert's toy lamb and lapdog should have been upped into the desiderated bona fide trained animals for Broadway.

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