CAPSULE REVIEW : Daly’s ‘Gypsy’ Needs More Fire in Her Songs

Is everything still coming up roses for “Gypsy,” 30 years after the Jule Styne-Arthur Laurents-Stephen Sondheim musical first opened on Broadway?

Well, almost. For those needing proof, the evidence is on display at the St. James Theater, where a revival opened Thursday after a long national tour. (It stopped in Los Angeles last summer.) For much of the evening, the production reaffirms the show’s reputation as one of the greatest American musical comedies.

The only question about any major Broadway revival is how it compares to the original, and with ‘Gypsy,’ it is who plays Rose, the greedy, grasping Gorgon of a mother whose little girl, Louise, grows up to become the stripper Gypsy Rose Lee.

Tyne Daly, best known as the star of television’s “Cagney and Lacey,” has taken up the challenge. And she has succeeded--with one drawback.

The woman is a terrific actress and even has a few Mermanesque qualities. She talks tough and can bully with the best of them in the scenes when she tries to find jobs in vaudeville for her daughters, Baby June and Louise.

But any performer playing Rose must do more than act. Much of Rose’s fierceness and determination is expressed in song. Daly gets through her three star numbers adequately, but one misses the vocal fireworks that make them terrifying hymns of self-delusion and overconfidence.