Helping “Gypsy” ’s Strippers Take It All Off Anew

Hunkered down in a West Side restaurant the other night, the writer and director George C. Wolfe and the choreographer Camille A. Brown reminisced about how they'd met. Wolfe, who is a puckish seventy years old and had on a fuzzy blue sweater, couldn't quite remember. "It was in 2018, I believe," Brown said. She is forty-four, and had long dreadlocks and gold hoops in her ears. She reminded Wolfe that he had hired her that year to choreograph his film "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom." Now the two are working together on the upcoming Broadway revival of "Gypsy," starring Audra McDonald as the first Black Mama Rose.

Wolfe weighed in on how it was going: "Robin Wagner, the brilliant set designer, had this saying: ' "Collaboration" is a word that directors invented to make everyone feel good about obeying them.' " Brown smiled. Wolfe added, "Camille is having the time of her life."

Brown and Wolfe had arranged to go together to the Midnight Theatre, near Hudson Yards, to see a burlesque dancer named Angie Pontani perform. Pontani has been consulting with Brown about the strippers' dances in "Gypsy," including the famous number "You Gotta Get a Gimmick," featuring the Strumpet with a Trumpet and her fellow-ecdysiasts. (Brown's work on the warhorse Jule Styne–Stephen Sondheim musical will not include Jerome Robbins's original choreography.) Before the show, the two friends were catching up in the private dining room of the theatre's restaurant. On arriving, Wolfe took one look at a table set for twelve and said, "Lots of seats. One for each of our multiple personalities."

Sipping a cranberry juice, Wolfe explained how, in his conception of "Gypsy," "burlesque is the place where truth gets told." In the musical, which is based on Gypsy Rose Lee's memoir, the stage mother Rose finally gives up on vaudeville and pushes her daughter Louise into stripping. "By the time we get to Act II, vaudeville is dead," Wolfe said. "In place of aspiration and romanticism is truth. And, if strippers are going to survive this place, then truth becomes their weapon. So it becomes this crash course between What We Were Planning For and What Is."

Louise comes into her own on the burlesque stage, eclipsing her cosseted little sister, June. "Having been the girl who was never 'seen,' Louise winds up being very, very seen," Wolfe said.

"It's not voyeurism," Brown noted. "It's her taking the space." Later in the show, Mama Rose takes the space in her own way, belting her showstopping cri de coeur "Rose's Turn." "One story is told through song, and one is told through dance," Brown said.

"Some people call Rose a monster," Wolfe said. "This is a character in a musical written in 1959, who is standing center stage and singing, 'Someone tell me, when is it my turn? Don't I get a dream for myself?' A mother, saying, 'Where's mine?' " He went on, "Male characters get to sing about that stuff all the time: 'I gotta be me!' 'To dream the impossible dream!' " Brown nodded. Wolfe added, "Welcome to the mess of parenting. Welcome to the mess of not receiving what you thought you were due."

Ten minutes before curtain, Wolfe and Brown took their seats in the theatre. Pontani came out wearing a sparkly silver ensemble, accessorized with long gloves and heels, and performed three slinky, sensuous dances, interspersed with peppy versions of standards performed by a quintet led by Pontani's husband, Brian Newman, who is the bandleader for Lady Gaga's jazz shows. During the burlesque numbers, Pontani energetically manipulated her arsenal of G-strings and feather fans into a storm cloud of come-hither and don't-even. When she gleefully swirled her tasselled pasties in her husband's face, Wolfe burst out laughing. Earlier, he'd talked about the strippers in "Gypsy" and how they have "a toughness, but also a humanity." Pontani, he said, "helped us find not just what is sensually assaultive but that which is humane."

After taking their bows, Pontani and Newman came out into the audience to say hello to Wolfe and Brown. Pontani, in a honking Jersey accent, expounded on one of her dances, a ballet-themed piece in which she'd been draped in a bit of gauzy white fabric. "I love a costume that fits in a ziplock," she said.

Thanking her, Wolfe said that he had an early rehearsal, and Brown needed to catch a train. A few moments later, they were gone. Gone like vaudeville.