NYT: Two Helpings of Pie From Broadway’s Fridge

Two Helpings of Pie From Broadway’s Fridge

By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

“SOUTH PACIFIC” and “Gypsy,” which both return to Broadway this spring, originally opened 10 years apart, standing neatly as theatrical bookends of the 1950s. The Rodgers and Hammerstein romance set in the Pacific during World War II had its New York premiere in April 1949, on the cusp of that fabled decade of American prosperity and self-confidence. The brassy musical inspired by Gypsy Rose Lee’s memoir first took a bow in May 1959, as the decade drew to a close and only a few shadows of the more fractious era ahead could be discerned on the horizon.

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NYT: Sing Out, Laura. It’s Your Turn.

Sing Out, Laura. It’s Your Turn.
By CELIA McGEE

IT’S hard to cover a tattoo when there’s a striptease involved.

Night after night (and two afternoons a week), Laura Benanti’s makeup assistant spends quite some time masking the butterfly the actress has tattooed on her lower back so it won’t show in “Let Me Entertain You,” the eye-riveting number in which Ms. Benanti, as the gawky Louise in “Gypsy,” molts into the stripper Gypsy Rose Lee.

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