She has appeared on Broadway in revivals of Chicago and Damn Yankees, and can be heard in countless animated films from Finding Dory to TV’s Rugrats. But for audiences at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre, Vicki Lewis is the big-voiced, pint-sized actress who takes on such unlikely starring roles as matchmaker Dolly Gallagher Levi in Hello, Dolly! and crabby orphanage matron Miss Hannigan in Annie.
Now, under the guidance of her Dolly! director, Marcia Milgrom Dodge, Lewis attempts one of the towering roles in the musical theater canon, the ultimate stage mother, Rose Hovick in Stephen Sondheim-Jule Styne-Arthur Laurents’ Gypsy. Performances begin tonight, and performances continue through Sunday, April 9.
Asked what she sought in a performer to play Rose, Dodge says, “Someone who is brave, who can create that tough exterior, but also has enormous pathos. Two seconds after I said yes (to the directing assignment), I knew my Mama Rose would be Vicki Lewis.”
“I’m 57. At this stage in my life and as an actor, I have been through pain, I have been through loss, I have been tenacious in my career and it got me nowhere at times,” says Lewis. “And I’ve had everything I wanted and then the bottom fell out. I’ve lived enough that all of these emotions live in my palette now.
“I identify with (Rose) and I think it’s important that she not be played as a selfish, one-track-mind human being. She gets played like a monster and it tends to be one-noted. I think she’s doing the best that she can with the tools in her chest. Looking at her that way, she has a lot more vulnerability and a lot more colors.”
As with many musical theater performers, Mama Rose had been on Lewis’s bucket list. “And it’s a role that I think I just now am able to fully realize,” she says. “I would like to have it in my arsenal for a while until I’m too old to play it. I come across onstage a little younger than I am, hopefully. I think that helps, but I would like to play it for a little while.”
The role has been played by many prominent actresses, from Ethel Merman, who originated the part in the 1959 Broadway production, to Angela Lansbury and Tyne Daly in revivals in the mid-1970s and late 1980s respectively, to Bernadette Peters and Patti LuPone in recent years.
Of those who came before her in the part, Lewis says, “It’s impossible to not have the essence of the performances that I saw somewhere in my psyche. I guess if I’m brutally honest, whatever spoke to me, stayed with me.”
As with her innovative take on Fiddler on the Roof two season ago, Dodge is under the shadow of Gypsy’s original director, Jerome Robbins. It is a daunting task, but she seems unintimidated. “These are classic musicals, and I take my cues from the book, music and lyrics. I don’t take my cues from the production design or the interpretation of a director. My tools are to read text and listen to music and collaborate with designers to figure out how to tell the story. Through my filter, my DNA,” she says. “I don’t approach shows to choose not to do something, but to do something. This was a show I wanted to get my hands on.”
“Marcia is smart. She takes a script and she asks good questions about why is this happening there,” notes Lewis. “It forces the actors to actually make sense of the thing, not just duplicate the way it has been done previously. That takes it out of the parroting that gets done in these big shows. You have to look at it with fresh eyes.”
Describing her take on Mama Rose, Lewis says, “I think she’s a woman who had an emotional hole that is just never filled. She didn’t get to live her own dreams as a young girl because of her father and being poor. She was desperate to get out of a place she felt locked in, so she lives through those kids. I don’t even know if she’s capable of love in the real sense, with a man. Because if she gets too vulnerable, I think she’s afraid of being hurt.
“It’s all about survival, one day at a time. So when everything goes wrong – they don’t get any more bookings in vaudeville, now they’re in burlesque. It’s as low as it can be, but as long as I can put Louise – (the future Gypsy Rose Lee) – in the spotlight, I have a piece of it and I can feel seen and heard.”
In her desperation, Rose does some monstrous things, but “I don’t think you’re repelled by her if I’m telling the story right,” says Lewis. “There are moments where you’ll go, ‘How can she behave that way?’ It looks horrible at times, the way she treats Louise. It seems ruthless, but I hope that you’ll see a human being in there. She says at the end, ‘I just wanted to be noticed,’ and I think they all do, because that’s so human.”
Gypsy has one of the great finale numbers, a solo called Rose’s Turn in which the character sums up her life, sifts through her mistakes and teeters on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
“Sondheim and Styne gave actresses playing Rose an incredible map of her emotional journey,” says Dodge of the finale.
“As an actor, if you just stay available, it starts to affect you, just connecting the dots they give you,” adds Lewis. “Will it be the same every night? I hope not. Will I cry at the same place? No. Will I cry at all? Maybe not. Will I fall apart in big ways? Yes. Will it work? I hope so.”
GYPSY, Maltz Jupiter Theatre, 1001 E. Indiantown Road, Jupiter. Previews: Today and Wednesday. Opens Thursday and runs through April 9. Tickets from $61 and up. Call: 561-575-2223 or visit jupitertheatre.org.