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Williams Street Rep falls short in tackling 'Gypsy'

First impressions mean a lot in the theater. Unfortunately Williams Street Repertory steps off on the wrong foot even before the curtain parts for its take on the classic 1959 Broadway musical "Gypsy" at the Raue Center for the Arts in Crystal Lake.

The rousing overture to "Gypsy," often cited by critics to be one of Broadway's very best, receives an anemic performance from the pit band under music director Mike Potts. Even worse, cuts were made to shorten it.

Once the show gets going, director/choreographer Mark R. Mahallak's sometimes questionable casting and often messy approach to staging "Gypsy" only confirms initial expectations.

Mahallak allows many of the performers to get away with gesturing to illustrate song lyrics. Some of his added stage bits - such as trapping a hotel manager in a trunk or kids mobbing a theater manager - don't get the laughs that were likely intended. The production's scene changes are also interminably long.

Inspired by the embellished memoirs of burlesque queen Gypsy Rose Lee, "Gypsy" is a musical fable that is really more about her mean-spirited, manipulative stage mother, Rose Hovick. The real-life Rose pushed and bullied her two daughters, June and Louise, into show business; they would respectively grow up to be the actress June Havoc and the stripper/talk show hostess Gypsy Rose Lee.

As sharply fashioned by playwright Arthur Laurents, lyricist Stephen Sondheim and composer Jule Styne, Rose is a slippery creature for audiences. They should simultaneously want to root for Rose's gumption while recoiling at her blind ambitions to achieve stardom at any cost in vaudeville, even though that American art form was on its last legs.

Amanda Flahive plays Rose as a madcap with a desire to personally entertain (and no doubt, to disarm) those around her. Flahive's approach works well to explain why Rose's love interest, the showbiz manager Herbie (a solid Joe Lehman), falls for her in the first place. Yet many will miss the more typical hard-driving approach to Rose. Flahive's nasal belting voice also isn't the most flattering.

Willow Schneider is on much more secure ground as Louise, the "no-talent" sibling whose femininity is kept under wraps so her more gifted younger sister can hog the spotlight. Schneider convincingly makes Louise's metamorphosis to the striptease queen work as one of the stronger performances in this production.

Sarah Weinstein's bossy Mazeppa, Kate Wilford's ditsy Electra and Teresa Arnold's Tessie Tura are good, too. They all shine and offer up plenty of fun as the trio of past-their-prime strippers who teach Louise the rules of their art in the showstopper "You Gotta Have a Gimmick."

Some of the other casting isn't as solid. Shaina Summerville as Dainty June isn't as gymnastically impressive onstage as she could be. And though he dances very well, Jake Stempel comes off as too old to be the teenage showman Tulsa, who sends Louise's heart aflutter in the number "All I Need is the Girl."

"Gypsy" is a dramatically complex and technically difficult show, and Williams Street Repertory isn't quite up to the challenge.

Dainty June (Shaina Summerville) and her “Farmboys” (Tyler Callahan as L.A., Roy Brown as Yonkers, Jake Stempel as Tulsa and Michael Neumann as Angie) audition their vaudeville act to play the Palace Theatre on Broadway in Williams Street Repertory's “Gypsy.” Courtesy of Flash of Glory Photography
Louise (Willow Schneider), right, now known as the burlesque stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, gets an earful from her mother, Rose (Amanda Flahive), in Williams Street Repertory's take on the 1959 Broadway musical “Gypsy” at the Raue Center for the Arts in Crystal Lake. Courtesy of Flash of Glory Photography

“Gypsy”

★ ★

Location: Williams Street Repertory at Raue Center for the Arts, 26 N. Williams St., Crystal Lake, (847) 356-9212 or

rauecenter.org

Showtimes: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday (no show Oct. 18) through Nov. 1

Running time: Two hours and 45 minutes, including intermission

Tickets: $32.50-$38.50

Parking: Area street parking and nearby lots

Rating: For adults and older teenagers; contains scenes set in a burlesque theater

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