Word: merman
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...chosen. The upshot is a gorgeous production that not only honors the past but also celebrates the present. It showcases the leading director of this era, Jerry Zaks, and the leading designer, Tony Walton, each in peak form. In Faith Prince it makes a new musical star of Ethel Merman-size potential...
...unreleased gems as well as Streisand standards like People. It charts her fast climb chronologically, with especially fascinating bits from the young years: displaying a studied charm on early TV appearances, singing in a Greenwich Village club, holding her own in a chat with Judy Garland and Ethel Merman. The results are at once nostalgic and stunningly fresh. New fans needn't apply, but old ones will feel that, as another of Streisand's hits put it, Happy Days Are Here Again. -- E.L.B...
...objected to Salonga because she was not a citizen (she is a Filipino), but eventually accepted her as providing "unique services." Only 17 when she won the role, at 20 she sings with nonstop power and precision and acts with steamroller emotional clarity. Theater insiders compare her to Ethel Merman. Like Merman, she makes a role seem one she was born to play...
Gypsy, a slapstick but chilling portrait of the ultimate stage mother, faithfully evokes the original Jerome Robbins production, including, alas, the cutesy, numbers-strung-together Arthur Laurents libretto. If Daly cannot quite dislodge from memory the performances of Ethel Merman and Angela Lansbury, particularly not as a singer, she rivals them as a force of nature. Coarse, thoughtless, unscrupulous and fierce, her Mama Rose is nonetheless just likable enough to explain why two daughters and a surrogate husband stick around so long and forgive so much. Among supporting players, only Jonathan Hadary, as Rose's agent and lover, excels...
...Porter really were to lend approval, it would be chiefly for Patti LuPone. As Nightclub Belter Reno Sweeney, she rivals the role's originator, Ethel Merman, in volume and clarity of voice, and far outdoes her in intelligence and heart. CoStar Howard McGillin has shirt-ad looks, puppyish charm and a lilting tenor. Other delights: Tony Walton's Art Deco ocean-liner set, Paul Gallo's seascape lighting and Michael Smuin's crisp choreography. The supporting cast is mostly ordinary, and Kathleen Mahony-Bennett's oomphless ingenue is not even that. The book, by P.G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton...