We don’t see that much of Barbra Streisand on the big screen anymore, and while most people probably think that’s a good thing, that doesn’t mean she’s not looking for roles. Variety reports that she’s eyeing a role in Warner Bros. and Joel Silver’s planned remake of Gypsy.
The 1959 Aurthur Laurents musical, Gypsy: A Musical Fable has long been a favourite with middle-aged actresses, largely because it’s seen as having one of the few great singing roles for a slightly older actress, that of Mama Rose, a take-no-prisoners stage mother who raises her two daughters to perform,while the vaudeville circuit srumbles around them. It’s based on the memoir of famed striptease artists Gypsy Rose Lee.
While at 68, Streisand may be a little old to believably have two young daughters on the stage, she’s not one to let a little thing like realism stand in the way. It would also be her first musical since Yentl in 1983. Currently the remake is at a very early stage, with no director or writer yet attached.
While there was a movie version of Gypsy in 1962 starring Rosalind Russell and Natalie Wood, as well as a Bette Midler TV movie in the early 90s, it’s one of the ‘great’ musicals that’s yet to get its definitive film version. As a result the idea of remaking it pops up every few years, each time with a different actress wanting to show off her skills as Mama Rose. Whether this one will actually make it off the ground is yet to be seen.