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Other albums by Ethel Merman

Despite having won the Emmy Award for Best Actress in a Drama in 1983, 1984, 1985, and 1988 for her role in the 1982-1988 network television police series Cagney & Lacey (she was Lacey), second-generation TV actress Tyne Daly would not have seemed to most musical theater enthusiasts to be a likely candidate to play the starring role of Rose in the venerable Broadway musical Gypsy, if only because her stage experience was limited and she was not known to be a singer. By 1989, she was a star, however, known to millions of television viewers, and her series had ended, which made her a good bet (if she could at least carry a tune) for a national tour of Gypsy, since her fans could be counted on to come out so they could see her in person. And during the six months of that tour, which began May 2, 1989, she was able to hone her performance such that a Broadway opening became a valid possibility. After all, the perennial hit show had been away from New York for 15 years, the same amount of time that had passed between the Ethel Merman-starring original production in 1959 and the Angela Lansbury-starring revival in 1974. When Daly opened in Gypsy on Broadway on November 16, 1989, she pleasantly surprised the critics, leading to an extended run and this cast album, recorded in January 1990. By its evidence, the quality she brought to Rose was more an acting than a singing one. The part is essentially unsympathetic as written by librettist Arthur Laurents, but Merman and Lansbury brought their charm and charisma to it, winning audiences over. Some of those who went to see Daly knew her from TV, of course, but as the dialogue excerpts included on this album show, she was willing to go with some of the less appealing aspects of the character. As for her singing, well, she can carry a tune, but she doesn't really deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with her predecessors, which is more of a problem on an album than in the theater. It means that, as a recording, this version of Gypsy is largely valuable as a souvenir for those who saw Daly play the part, not providing any real competition to the original Broadway cast album with Merman. The rest of the cast is fine, with Jonathan Hadary as a particular stand-out in the male lead of Herbie. (The 1989 Broadway revival of Gypsy won the Tony Award for Best Revival, and Daly won the Tony for Best Actress in a Musical; the show ran 581 performances.) ~ William Ruhlmann