Players Centre in Sarasota stages Sondheim’s ‘Gypsy’

When she got a call from Jeffery Kin, the artistic director of the Players Centre for Performing Arts in Sarasota, Ellie Pattison had her excuses all ready.

“I figured he was going to ask for money,” she said. “So I started to tell him that I couldn’t afford to give him anything.”

It turns out, though, that Kin wasn’t calling to seek a donation for his theater. He wanted a much bigger favor. Eve Caballero, who was playing Mama Rose, the central character in “Gypsy,” had broken her foot. Kin wanted to know whether Pattison would step in.

Only two-and-a-half weeks of rehearsal remained. That’s an awfully short time to prepare for such a huge role. But Pattison didn’t hesitate before she accepted.

“I think it’s the most iconic woman’s role ever,” she said. “And I didn’t even have to audition.”

It helped that Pattison loved the role and that she had been the understudy for Rose in a Miami production, though she never went on stage in the role.

“The role was already in my body,” she said. “All I had to learn was the movement.”

By the time of the first run-through, Pattison had the role down.

Audiences don’t have to worry that they’re seeing for the runner-up Rose.

“Ellie’s great,” director Brad Wages said. “She was out of town during auditions. If she had auditioned, I would have had a tough choice.”

There are probably more widely known women’s roles in musical theater, but Rose, the quintessential stage mother who was obsessed with turning her daughters into show biz stars, is much more substantial role than most. The fact that she was a real person, the mother of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee and actor June Havoc, and that she really did some really horrific things, such as pushing a man out of a second-floor window, makes her all the more compelling, Pattison said.

Plus, she’s on stage for almost the entire show and sings about half the songs (which have music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim). Rose’s signature piece is “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” which ends Act One. “Gypsy’s other best-known songs include “Let Me Entertain You” and “Together, Wherever We Go.”

The role has attracted a lot of the legendary women of musical theater over the years for Broadway runs. Among them are Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, Bernadette Peters and Patti Lupone.

The title character is a stripper, but both Pattison and Wages said “Gypsy” is a family-friendly show. Vaudeville-era strippers didn’t show much more than a shoulder or a thigh, and so the sexuality is more suggestive than explicit. There are even young kids in the cast, playing Rose and June in their early years. And it’s a significant show in the history of musical theater, only the second produced show co-written by Sondheim, and it helped develop the art form we know today.

“Some people consider it the classic Broadway musical,” Wages said. “The characters are real, they’re really people who came into Rose’s life, and they really did these things. And everyone has heard ‘Let me Entertain You’ and ‘Everything’s Coming Up Roses,’ even if they’ve only heard Muzak versions.”

Details: Through Oct 16, The Players Centre for Performing Arts, 838 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. $25-$30. 941-365-2494, theplayers.org.

This story was originally published September 28, 2016 at 5:04 PM with the headline "Players Centre in Sarasota stages Sondheim’s ‘Gypsy’."