Laura Benanti as Gypsy Rose Lee (Photo: Joan Marcus)

Lucky me. . .and lucky everyone else who wasn't in town last summer to see the Encores! revival of Gypsy. The show, the first in the series' to have an expanded, fully staged production has now transferred to Broadway with the same cast and creative team, and the man responsible for the show's enduringly rich book again at the helm.

Simon Saltzman who reviewed the City Center production and went back to see it at the St. James when I did was blown away all over again. He declared the transfer to be, if anything, even more sublime —with Patti LuPone and Laura Benanti deepening and honing their performances as the unstoppable Momma Rose and the pathetic, no-talent Louise turned into a confident and defiant adult.

Whatever the differences between the City Center Gypsy and the current one, as I write this I'm still rung out from that electrifying " Rose's Turn" and the entire two and a half hours of musical theater at its most thrilling. The brilliant collaboration by Arthur Laurents, Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim has made this a musical of musicals, and created a character in Momma Rose that's the Medea, Lady Macbeth, Mary Tyrone, Blache DuBois all rolled into the modern musical's juiciest and most coveted role.

Following in the footsteps of numerous stars, LuPone has put her own amazingly unique footprint on the role. She's made the volcanic second act aria, "Rose's Turn," an unforgettable "Patti's Turn." And Laurents has managed to find new depths in his own brilliant book, so that for all of the tuneful hit-upon-hit Styne score and inspired, character defining Sondheim lyrics, this is as much a play with integral music as a musical with a strong story line.

While LuPone is the box office name in this Gypsy, this is a win-win-win cast. As LuPone meets the tough challenge of showing the vulnerable loving side of the monstrously ambitious and misguided Rose, so Benanti manages to reconcile the pigailed, awkwardly untalented Louise we see for most of the show with the cool woman who has turned a step down the lowest rung of the show business ladder into her own kind of super stardom. It's the way Benanti taps into Louise's needy devotion to her mother and shows her to be not just a good listener but an emotionally engaged one (especially during the Tulsa dance number by Tony Yazbeck and the three strippers' demonstration of the fine points of strip tease) that makes the Louise-to-Miss Gypsy Rose Lee transformation and the mother-daughter rapprochement completely convincing.

It's the way Benanti's delighted interaction with the three strippers that also gives those tough gals' "You've Gotta Get a Gimmick" newly poignant as well as the usually funny resonance. Lenora Nemetz who plays one of those strippers, Mazeppa, as well as the crotchety, crusty Miss Cratchett is the only cast replacement and she is more than up to both parts. A temporary replacement at the performance I saw—-Katie Micha as Baby June— did just fine in the delightfully hokey kiddy numbers.

Leigh Ann Larkin brings an apt touch of sibling nastyness to the older June and Boyd Gaines, best known for his roles in straight dramas and as a marvelously realized stumblebum in the dance musical Contact, is a most satisfying Herbie. You want him to stand up to Rose long before he finally does and yet you understand why he's trapped the minute he lays eyes on her and tells her "You look like a pioneer woman without a frontier. "

I'll stop here and refer you to Simon's review below since it pretty much says it all: Thanks to the enduring brilliance of the book, music and lyrics, the excellence of the cast headed by the galvanic LuPone, Arthur Laurents' nuanced direction and the on the mark stagecraft. . . everything at the St. James is indeed coming up roses. With all this talent no gimmick is needed and awards galore are a sure thing.

PRODUCTION NOTES
Except for the venue and performance notes below, the production notes and songs are the same as the ones at the end of the review below, with the one cast change, as already noted, being Lenora Nemetz in the two roles previously played by Nancy Opel.

St. James Theatre, 246 West 44th Street 212/239-6200
Tickets $117 to $42. Monday to Saturday @ 8pm, Wednesday & Saturday @ 2pm; beginning March 31: Tuesday to Saturday @ 8pm, Wednesday & Saturday @ 2pm, Sunday @ 3pm. From 3/03/08; opening 3/27/08. Re-reviewed by Elyse Sommer at March 26th press matinee Closing 1/11/09 after a total of 27 previews and 332 regular performances.