Quote for the day:

If wanna bump it
Bump it with a trumpet!
—Stephen Sondheim

The production of the musical Gypsy starring Audra McDonald as Rose (sometimes incorrectly referred to as “Mama” Rose, but if you’re gonna do that you should spell it like Arthur Laruents does it in the play and Stephen Sondheim does it in the lyrics: “Momma”, but I digress).

Anyway, the production, which was expected to run at least until October, has announced that it will be closing on August 17, which happens to be the birthday of my cousin Kathy, as well as the birthday of someone else I know. Wait, don’t tell me, I’ll think of it.

So the question is why is it closing early?

Perhaps New York has had too many productions of Gypsy in too short a time. Or perhaps folks are tired being gouged when a big star appears in a Broadway show.

Those are the prices for a Thursday evening performance in the Orchestra. Yes, there are less expensive seats available and you can even get seats in the Rear Mezzanine for under a hundred bucks, but I can’t imagine there are too many high school kids planning the kind of New York City weekend that we did so many years ago. Those prices are way beyond inflation.

Even 20 years ago when my sister and I took our parents for their 60th wedding anniversary to NYC to see Gypsy and The Producers, the top prices were a hundred bucks. And that was for each of those shows. Gypsy was boasting Bernadette Peters, but The Producers no longer had any top names on its marquee.

My favorite Rose was Angela Lansbury, followed by Bernadette Peters, both of whom emphasized Rose’s more ingratiating qualities, and I believe that Audra McDonald’s Rose carried on that tradition, as opposed to the monstrous side of Rose which was emphasized by Tyne Daly and Patti LuPone (well, what would one expect from LuPone?).

Here is a video of the recording of “Together, Wherever We Go” from the cast album.