Dramatic Analysis
In analyzing the character of Rose, Clive Barnes described her as "bossy, demanding, horrific...." Rich described Rose as "a monster". Critic Walter Kerr commented that though Rose is a monster, she must be liked and understood. Patti LuPone describes Rose: "She has tunnel vision, she's driven, and she loves her kids.... And she is a survivor. I do not see her as a monster at all — she may do monstrous things, but that does not make a monster." Sondheim has said of the character: "The fact that she's monstrous to her daughters and the world is secondary... She's a very American character, a gallant figure and a life force." Sondheim also noted, "Yet the end of Gypsy is not entirely bleak. Louise comes out a star and forgives her mother. There is hope for her. Rose does confront who she is in 'Rose's Turn.' There is a catharsis. It's not Rodgers and Hammerstein, but you feel maybe the mother and daughter will come to an understanding and maybe triumph over Rose's craziness and Louise's bitterness."
Brantley noted that Rose is a "mythic character". She is "Traditionally presented as an armored tank on autopilot, which finally crashes only minutes before the final curtain...."
Bernadette Peters' take of the character was different: "Rose was a woman who was traumatized by her own mother leaving her at an early age. I think that longing for acceptance is what fuels all her ambition. In the end, when she confronts herself in Rose's Turn, she realizes she has failed her daughter just as her own mother failed her...and that destroys Rose. There is a vulnerability to Rose that makes her human, not just some loud and cartoonish parody of a stage mother."
Read more about this topic: Gypsy: A Musical Fable
Famous quotes containing the words dramatic and/or analysis:
““The unities, sir,’ he said, “are a completeness—a kind of universal dovetailedness with regard to place and time—a sort of general oneness, if I may be allowed to use so strong an expression. I take those to be the dramatic unities, so far as I have been enabled to bestow attention upon them, and I have read much upon the subject, and thought much.””
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“The spider-mind acquires a faculty of memory, and, with it, a singular skill of analysis and synthesis, taking apart and putting together in different relations the meshes of its trap. Man had in the beginning no power of analysis or synthesis approaching that of the spider, or even of the honey-bee; but he had acute sensibility to the higher forces.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)