In portraying Momma Rose in the Shaw Festival’s long-awaited musical, Gypsy, Kate Hennig joins a slew of legendary actors who have taken on the much-coveted role, including Ethel Merman, Bette Midler and Bernadette Peters.DAVID COOPER
She’s been called a monster and the stage mother from hell. She’s loud, brash and overbearing, fiercely determined to turn her young daughters into stars.
She’s also one of the greatest roles in one of the greatest American musicals.
Momma Rose, the hurricane force at the centre of Gypsy, is both appalling and fascinating and perhaps, in a twisted way, even admirable.
“She’s a dreamer,” says Kate Hennig, who portrays Rose in the Shaw Festival’s long-awaited revival of the beloved Jule Styne-Stephen Sondheim musical. “She doesn’t want to follow society’s rules of what a wife and mother should be.”
Rather than stay at home like a good little housewife in the 1920s, Rose hits the road, trying to make a living by exploiting the talents of her younger daughter, June, who she pushes into vaudeville, and later, her older girl, Louise – the future burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee. (The musical’s book, by Arthur Laurents, was inspired by Lee’s memoirs.)
“Rose is pretty messed up psychologically,” Hennig admits. “She loves her children, but she’s also not afraid of pimping them, basically. But this was a time where it was almost impossible for a single mother to make any money and she’s out there, trying to keep food on the table.”
Hennig has had plenty of time to consider Rose’s complex character. The show was originally slated to run in the festival’s 2020 season and was just weeks from opening when the COVID-19 pandemic shut it down. “We were doing our final run-through in the rehearsal hall on the day we all got sent home from work,” she says.
Rose is a huge and daunting role. But Kate has thrown herself into it with her usual extraordinary courage and skill and heart.
— Tim Carroll, artistic director, Shaw Festival
The intervening time and the stress of the pandemic have left her with, in her words, a “gentler” approach to the role. “I feel less that I have to knock it out of the park and more that my objective is to discover it,” she says.
The multi-award-winning actress is also going into this production with a new director, Jay Turvey, and several new cast members. There was never any question, however, that she would be playing Rose.
Tim Carroll, the Shaw Festival’s artistic director, chose the show specifically for Hennig. “Gypsy is to musicals a bit like Hamlet is to plays: You don’t plan it unless you have the lead in mind,” he says. “Rose is a huge and daunting role. But Kate has thrown herself into it with her usual extraordinary courage and skill and heart.”
Also like Hamlet, there are a lot of daunting precedents. The legendary Ethel Merman originated the role of Rose in 1959. Since then, it’s been played by some of Broadway’s biggest stars, including Bernadette Peters, Patti LuPone and the late Angela Lansbury. Hennig says that sort of legacy can be intimidating, but she’s put it aside.
“You can’t come in with some preconceived notion about how a part should be played,” she says. “I’m excited about how Rose is going to inhabit me, as opposed to how I’ll inhabit her.”
Gypsy runs May 10 to Oct. 7 at the Festival Theatre in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.
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