Photo by Thee Photo Ninja
“Everything’s coming up roses this time for me!” sings stage mother Mama Rose in the finale of the 1959 musical Gypsy.
That number is called “Rose’s Turn.” Doug DeVita’s Fable, a new play now at freeFall, could well be named “June’s Turn.”
Fable conjures up the hazy memories of actress June Havoc, whom her mother (the original Mama Rose) molded into child star Baby June. As a teenager, Havoc escaped her mother’s clutches to dance in marathons. She eventually forged a career as a respected star of stage and screen. Her sister, Louise, would go on to become burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee, the witty striptease artist. Lee’s 1957 memoir inspired the musical, now considered one of the best of all time.
But Gypsy almost didn’t make it to Broadway. Havoc hated Arthur Laurents’s script and refused to sign the necessary release. Fable explains why, and reveals how the musical’s full title — Gypsy: A Musical Fable — got its name.
Fable at freeFall Theatre
The central dilemma of Fable — will she or won’t she sign the papers? — isn’t particularly compelling.
The play gets its heft from the larger questions it raises — how we remember, what determines our identity, who tells our stories. And it gets its charm from ingenious staging, perfect casting, and playful forays into vaudeville conventions and Broadway lore.
We meet June in three stages of her life. Bonnie Agan plays her in 2008, when June is older and bedridden but still angry. Liz Power brings us June in 1959, hell-bent on stalling Gypsy. Mya Simpkins is Baby June, the adorable blonde moppet. All three actresses give grounded, believable performances. Thanks to costumes by David Kovach and wigs by Jonathan Hall, they look like different ages of the same character.
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In older June’s recollections (or hallucinations), the three Junes converse with one another and with sister Louise (Heather Baird). They also reconnect with their mother (Melissa Minyard, who doubles as Ethel Merman). Baird doubles, too. We meet her first as June’s nurse, who in a witty coup de theâtre strips off her nurse’s uniform to reveal the elegant Gypsy Rose Lee.
The Gypsy production team also comes into play. Laurents (James Putnam) and director Jerome Robbins (Larry Alexander) engage in perpetual, hilariously profane battle. Minyard’s Merman is genius. She gets all the best lines and she makes them work.
Right from the start, with a raving “Yowza! Yowza!,” the emcee (Putnam) establishes a showbiz framework. He welcomes us to “Fable: A Fable About a Musical Fable.” We’re going to be moving through “A Marathon of Memories,” he says.
The multi-purpose proscenium and drape in Hansen Scenic’s design (enhanced by Dalton Hamilton’s evocative lighting) add to the meta-theatrical mood. Projections by Eric Davis establish time and place with subtle elan, as does Davis’ smooth direction.
Final Thoughts
I would like to have seen more of Gypsy’s sardonic side and less of June’s petulant side. To tell the truth, I would have been happy watching a whole evening of just Ethel, Arthur and Jerry going at each other sans the sisters. But if that were the case, we’d be deprived of inspired moments. Like this one in particular where Arthur has tea with one sister and drinks with the other. Thanks to Putnam’s mercurial talent, Arthur switches moods and locales with comic ease.
There are sly references in the dialogue to familiar numbers from Gypsy, and snippets from the songs themselves. Michael Raabe leads a crackerjack combo behind the scenes in period tuneage. Plus, he’s written two original songs for Baby June. One of them, “Circle of Sun,” epitomizes a fact of life for these Broadway babies. The spotlight is like sunlight to them, and they need it to live.
As an account of one woman’s obsession with the past, Fable puts the “me” in “memory play.” As an homage to a work of theatrical genius that was spawned despite (or because of) all the pesky humans involved, it’s a backstage-drama delight.
See Fable at freeFall
Fable, freeFall Theatre, 6099 Central Ave., St. Petersburg. Through Sept. 8. $25-$55. 727-498-5205, freefalltheatre.com.
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