Audra McDonald Doesn’t Care What Critics Think —But She Was Glad to Get ‘Gypsy’ Feedback From One Important Person

Audra McDonald is thrilled with the luxe, vinyl merchandise of Gypsy Starring Audra McDonald (2024 Broadway Cast Recording): “The presumption is gorgeous. It’s bully old-fashioned vinyl, the aged days of large booklets, glossy pictures and each the lyrics.” That being said, there’s nary mode she’ll perceive to it for astatine slightest 10 years. “No, no, no,” she tells Billboard. “I’m excessively adjacent to it close now. I don’t person the aforesaid acquisition of it anyone other would, truthful I wouldn’t bask listening to it.”

Mama Rose needn’t instrumentality discourtesy – the six-time Tony victor has the aforesaid decade-or-more aversion to each the formed recordings she’s made implicit the people of her groundbreaking career. But for those who bash driblet the needle (or deed play) connected this latest imagining of the Jule Styne, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents musical, they’ll find much than conscionable caller recordings of aged standbys. The pained nuance that McDonald brought to George C. Wolfe’s 2024 accumulation of Gypsy radiates passim this vigor play-style album. It’s not simply that her soprano sounds magnificent connected standards specified arsenic “Some People” and “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” (though it does), but that she brings a tortured, empathetic humanity to a portion that’s often been called the Mt. Everest of philharmonic theater.

When McDonald reaches the highest of “Rose’s Turn,” her typically flawless, operatic dependable begins to choke and sputter; successful those moments, the listener is arsenic overmuch of a witnesser to the showbiz matriarch’s “full-on affectional breakdown” arsenic the theatergoer was during her Tony-nominated run.

“The sessions were great. Easy? No,” McDonald says, adding that she was “grateful” for manager Wolfe’s beingness and feedback successful the studio. “It was a joyous experience, but it was hard. How ‘bout each those contradictions,” she laughs.

“Stepping into specified an iconic, classical relation [means] that everybody is an adept connected however the relation is to beryllium played,” she muses of a analyzable quality who is selfless yet selfish, driven and delusional successful adjacent measure. “Everybody is an expert, truthful you’re going to neglect successful somebody’s world. Honestly, I would accidental the lone radical who tin genuinely telephone themselves well-versed successful the relation are the radical who person played it. Until you’ve stepped into that role, you don’t know. You conscionable don’t,” she chuckles. “For radical to say, ‘She shouldn’t accidental it similar this due to the fact that this is what’s going on,’ I deliberation that’s each hogwash. Only the radical who person played this relation tin remark connected it with the existent cognition of it.”

True to that spirit, McDonald demurs erstwhile I inquire if she has immoderate proposal to connection Nichelle Lewis, who is presently playing Sarah — the relation that gave McDonald her 3rd Tony for champion featured histrion successful a philharmonic — successful a caller Broadway accumulation of Ragtime.

“I perceive she’s sidesplitting it, I can’t hold to spot it,” she says, pausing. “The lone proposal I person is to permission the quality astatine the theatre and not instrumentality it location – it’s specified a heavy, painful, traumatic role. Leave it there. It’s good to fto it spell and not bring it location and not enactment successful the satellite of Sarah erstwhile you’re distant from the theater. Let her encompass you successful the theater, but...