LIVING LEGEND

Gypsy star Audra McDonald is now the performer with the most Tony wins and nominations in history

- - BY CHARLOTTE ALTER

IF YOU HAPPEN TO TAKE YOUR EYES OFF THE STAGE DURING THE FIRST FEW MINUTES OF GYPSY ON BROADWAY, AND TURN INSTEAD TO THE AISLE, YOU'LL SEE A WOMAN STANDING ALONE IN THE DARK.

She’s in a velvet coat, holding a small dog, her face contorted into a grimace of ambition so fierce it looks something like rage, her eyes focused on the children dancing onstage as her hands twitch to the beat of the music. At first, nobody notices her, even though she is Audra McDonald, arguably the greatest living stage actor, even though she is already in character as Mama Rose, the most famous and reviled stage mother in musical theater. Then, she calls out her first line (“Sing out, Louise!”) and every head turns in unison. She is the person they have come to see, and she had been standing there next to them all along.

“Rose snuck in,” she tells me, leaning back on a cushioned chair in her dressing room, four hours before curtain. Her hair, prepped for her wig, is tucked under a baseball cap, and she is wearing comfy clothes before getting into costume. “When all the rest of the mothers have been kicked out, she snuck in, went in front, checked out what was going on. She’s already miles ahead when the show starts.”

The same could be said, in some sense, of McDonald. After rumors of her casting spread last year—“You know, people talk, people talk,” she said—the announcement was met with excitement and anticipation. And since the show opened in December, she’s been garnering widespread praise, with at least one critic having a “spiritual epiphany.”

“When you talk about Greta Garbo, you think of that face. When you think about Ethel Merman, you hear that voice,” says Christine Baranski, who worked with McDonald on The Good Fight and The Gilded Age. “With Audra, it’s that lustrous presence.”