It's an understated show that Latté Da's Peter Rothstein has created, and many numbers pass by with little more than piano accompaniment. Briskey's taut and spiky performance pays off in a final grandiose turn. Mama Rose faces her ultimate crisis when she tries to figure out what her family's quest was all about. Perrin negotiates it all with an endearing look of amusement-an ugly duckling more than willing to swim in more inviting waters. Fame and fortune, and reinvention as Gypsy Rose Lee follow.
Push eventually comes to shove, and for money's sake the innocent Louise finds herself on the burlesque stage. In the second act June sensibly flees, and Mama Rose tries to reinvent the show with the (seemingly) talent-free Louise. Success on the stage is the fucking Matterhorn for her, and she's going to climb it. This woman is driving these girls, in the end, not because of the glamour, or the money (they never seem to have any) she's not even trying to live through them vicariously. While her depiction of Rose's doggedness is wholly authentic, she tosses in a self-possession that crosses the border into transparent desperation. And she duets with Allen on "If Momma Was Married" with an easy rhythm that paints the longing and suffering Mama Rose has inflicted on her offspring.Īnd what of Mama Rose? Well, Briskey plays her with a sort of anti-charm. She renders "Little Lamb" with an affecting ache (while children in animal costumes file through and a lonesome cello moans). She has a sweet, high, and occasionally raw voice, and under the stage lights she takes on the image of goofy tomboy in one moment and gorgeous ingenue the next. Perrin makes the most of this warped time. This sort of thing is common in show business-did you know that Lindsay Lohan is actually 37?-but here it leaves a particularly unsavory taste. Then, in mid-number, the children disappear and give way to their grown-up selves-still flogging the same old material and trying to pass themselves off as much younger than they really are.
These numbers are excellent, so over-the-top and eager to please that they leave the viewer positively giddy.
Leaving Seattle for broader theatrical pastures, Mama Rose proceeds to whip up a song-and-dance routine out of June's talents. In the early going, Louise and June are children (played by Sarah Cartwright and Julia Wiersum). The story's fulcrum is Mama Rose (Jody Briskey), a horrid stage mother who compels daughters Louise (Simone Perrin) and June (Katie Allen) to inhale deeply the last wisps of vaudeville. Few embraced this notion with more élan than Gyspy Rose Lee, the great striptease artist of the burlesque era whose memoirs inspired the canonical 1959 musical by Arthur Laurents, Jule Styne, and Stephen Sondheim, staged here by Theater Latté Da. It's a venerable rule of entertainment: When talent flags, try titillation. Parenthood: You ask for a prodigy, you get a stripper October 18, Quinton Skinner, City Pages.
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