On February 3, Audra visited Stephen at The Late Show to talk about playing Rose in Gypsy on Broadway, share strategies for New York Times Connections, and offers some advice to a young actor who just arrived in NYC.

Audra stars as Rose alongside Joy Woods (Louise), Jordan Tyson (June) and Danny Burstein (Herbie) in the revival of Gypsy on Broadway, directed by George C. Wolfe. The production opened officially at the newly renovated Majestic Theatre on December 19, 2024, to unanimous critical acclaim.

Hold your hats and hallelujah, our leading musical tragedienne offers an ultra-dramatic Rose in George C. Wolfe’s Broadway revival.” —New York Times

“McDonald, as will be no surprise if you’ve seen her in full dramatic mode, makes a meal of Rose’s ambition and, with a slight southern drawl, a dessert of her guile. […] Her scenes with Burstein are rich and funny and regretful; those with June (Jordan Tyson) and Louise (Joy Woods) are withering.” —New York Times

“[Wolfe] has given us a way of seeing a star who had to be seen in this role. As ‘Gypsy’ suggests, and McDonald keeps proving, a pioneer woman needs a frontier.” —New York Times

“A once-in-a-lifetime performance that you’d be crazy to miss.” —The Washington Post

“Audra McDonald is a revelation in a magnificent star turn.” —Time Out New York

“Audra McDonald is the best actress to ever play this iconic role.” —Chicago Tribune

“McDonald’s “Rose’s Turn” feels like a once-in-a-lifetime event; the sort of unequivocal theater magic that you one day tell your grandkids about.” —USA Today

“In ‘Gypsy,’ McDonald augments her unparalleled Broadway legacy by summoning America’s rueful history to the stage.” —Los Angeles Times

“It wasn’t simply that the actor’s virtuosity was unleashed at full force. It was that Broadway history and Black American history were converging in a performer who was offering her gifts to an audience in a climactic conflagration. The result was, if not a religious experience, then a spiritually transfiguring one. There was something at once sacrificial and redemptive in what McDonald was channeling in her art, and I left the Majestic Theatre feeling reborn.” —Los Angeles Times

“Ms. McDonald transfixes, terrifies, rends the heart with her searing performance of this great showpiece. It ranks as a landmark not just in this artist’s already-historic career but also in the storied career of the show itself.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Any production of ‘Gypsy’ rises or falls on its Rose, and Ms. McDonald’s lifts this staging to majestic (sorry) heights.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Fueled more by anguish than fury, McDonald cuts a wrenching path through the emotional labyrinth of Sondheim’s lyrics for ‘Rose’s Turn,’ finding a hundred shades of feeling sometimes in a single syllable. It’s a breakdown for the ages — and the kind of thrilling take that keeps the classics alive.” —The Washington Post

“McDonald’s Rose is a gale of tremulous desperation and vulturous ambition. […]  It’s a true bravura performance, the type of mesmeric, shamanistic, nearly unbelievable wattage promised by the best of musical theater.” —Guardian

Audra McDonald – winner of a record-breaking six Tony Awards, two Grammy Awards, and an Emmy Award, named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2015, and a recipient of the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama – will star as Rose in a new Broadway production of Gypsy, taking on what is widely regarded as the greatest role in musical theater. The upcoming revival will be directed by legendary five-time Tony Award-winning director George C. Wolfe. Gypsy features a book by Tony Award winner Arthur Laurents, music by Tony and Academy Award winner Jule Styne, and lyrics by Tony, Grammy, Academy Award, and Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Sondheim. Producers are Tom Kirdahy, Mara Isaacs, Kevin Ryan, Diane Scott Carter, Peter May, and Thomas M. Neff. Choreography will be by four-time Tony Award nominated Camille A. Brown. Additional casting and creative team members will be announced at a later date.

Performances will begin November 21, 2024 at Broadway’s newly renovated Majestic Theatre, with an opening date of December 19, 2024. Watch a teaser trailer for the production below. Tickets go on sale May 30 via telecharge.com. 

The New York Times declares that “Audra McDonald has become to the American theater what Meryl Streep is to film – a star of unstinting polish and versatility. Ms. McDonald embosses any production in which she appears with a good-value guarantee.” Gypsy reunites her with “titan of the American theatre” (New Yorker) George C. Wolfe, after their collaboration on the 2016 Tony-nominated production of Shuffle Along, or, The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed. 

Playing the role of Rose in Gypsy, McDonald joins an illustrious roster that includes some of the greatest performers in Broadway history. Since Ethel Merman starred in the 1959 Broadway premiere, the role has been played by Angela Lansbury in 1974, Tyne Daly in 1989, Bernadette Peters in 2003, and Patti LuPone in 2008. After the premiere, Kenneth Tynan raved in the New Yorker that the show “tapers off from perfection in the first act to mere brilliance in the second.” In 1974, Clive Barnes wrote in the New York Times: “Everything about Gypsy is right. The Jule Styne score has a lilt and a surprise to it. The music bounces out of the pit, assertive, confident, and cocky, and has a love affair with Stephen Sondheim’s elegantly paced, daringly phrased lyrics. And then there is the book by Arthur Laurents. Rose is possibly one of the few truly complex characters in the American musical.” Frank Rich’s 1989 New York Times review, calling the show “Broadway’s own brassy, unlikely answer to King Lear,” added: “It cannot be done without a powerhouse performance in its marathon parental role.”