By all accounts, the main event this Broadway season is director George C. Wolfe’s revival of Gypsy, starring six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald as the ambitious, overbearing, and fiercely protective Mama Rose. It’s a punishing, seismic role that’s been played by a true murderer’s row of Broadway divas—including Ethel Merman, Bernadette Peters, and, of course, Patti LuPone—but McDonald, the first Black actor to play Rose, was determined to interpret it anew.
Photo credit: Jenny Anderson