'Gypsy', Savoy Theatre, London - review

"You look like a pioneer woman without a frontier," says Herbie, the hapless agent trudging round Depression America with Momma Rose and her troupe. He's nailed her in one: Rose, the mother of all showbiz mothers, has the guts, resourcefulness and ruthlessness of a pioneer woman whose frontier is the vaudeville stage and whose goal is the receding horizon of fame.

Imelda Staunton's outstanding, exquisitely pitched performance, at the heart of Jonathan Kent's superb revival of the 1959 Sondheim-Styne Broadway musical, perfectly catches the terrier-like tenacity of this dogged little woman. From her first entrance - through the theatre stalls clutching, appropriately, a small dog - she is calling the shots: wheedling, bullying, anything to promote her two precious daughters, "child stars" she refuses to allow to grow up. She is hard as nails and sharp as tacks but Staunton also lets us see her vulnerability: the fear of poverty and thwarted ambition that drive her. All this comes together in a show-stopping finale so near breaking point it is painful to watch, as, with both daughters gone, she is faced with the truth about herself.

It is a blistering, yet beautifully detailed performance. But this is far from a one-woman show. There is similar attention to detail in Peter Davison's performance as the long-suffering Herbie and in Lara Pulver's touching, delicately observed Louise: the ugly duckling overlooked by her mother but destined to outstrip her as the burlesque act Gypsy Rose Lee.

Kent's fine ensemble production (first seen at Chichester Festival Theatre in October) summons the hopes and tacky realities of a vaudeville circuit on the wane and the tawdry details of its successor, burlesque. Stephen Mear's choreography relishes the sheer absurdity of vaudeville routines, while Louise Gold, Julie Legrand and Anita Louise Combe are a comic treat as the hard-bitten strippers showcasing their gimmicks. Another cracking transfer from Chichester.

gypsythemusical.com

Photograph: Johan Persson

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