Complex "Gypsy" travels to Everett stage

Cayman Ilika, far younger than the generation that first saw "Gypsy" on Broadway in 1959, was in the audience in New York in 2003 for the first night of previews of the revival cast, which featured Bernadette Peters as Mama Rose.

And now Ilika, 20, is playing the title role of Louise, Mama Rose's daughter, in the musical that runs through June 11 at the Snohomish County PUD Auditorium in Everett.

The Northwest Savoyards tackle this complex Stephen Sondheim-Jule Styne classic, with a cast of 40, an orchestra of 25 musicians playing multiple instruments, 100 costumes and at least 14 set changes.

Everyone has to be a "triple threat" in such a big musical, said director Janet Pope.

"You need to sing, dance, act," she said. "It's a show about performers, so there's multiple, complex dance routines. It also has some of the most in-depth characters in musical theater. There are three-dimensional people who were real people in real life."

It's a show about performers: the life of Louise Havoc, who rose from vaudeville as a child entertainer to burlesque as Gypsy Rose Lee and on to a career as an actress, author and host of a TV talk show.

The musical covers 15 years in the early life of the family, leaving their hometown of Seattle for the bumpy life of the theater circuit. Louise's sister Baby June was the breadwinner, earning $1,500 a week.

When Baby June inevitably got older, she was dubbed Dainty June because "Mama Rose couldn't allow her to grow up," Pope said. "Because that was her entire need for recognition as well as her financial income."

The 16 actors under age 20 virtually grow up in front of the audience in a memorable strobe-light number. From treble-voiced powerhouse Baby June to the grown-up Gypsy Rose Lee, they bring talent and authenticity to the musical, as well as hopes and dreams.

The cast members came from all over the Puget Sound area.

"We've got people who auditioned from Tacoma, Kent, Auburn, West Seattle and way up north to Mount Vernon — I think the talent level is wide," Pope said.

Ilika, who has been in seven musicals and a spate of small films and commercials since she moved back to Seattle last May from the Berklee College of Music in Boston, said the enthusiasm of the children in the show — one as young as 5 — reminds her of her own childhood in theater.

"It's so exciting to feel that these kids, this will be a huge part of their lives for some of them," she said. "And it's so funny to watch it happen from this perspective.

"You can see how much they love it. The girl playing Baby June, Britt Flatmo, she was born for the stage."

William Shindler, 18, stars opposite Ilika as dancer Tulsa in a memorable soft-shoe number, "All I Need Now Is the Girl."

Shindler, a member of Edmonds Community College's award-winning Soundsation jazz choir, is a skilled singer, but to learn the dance steps he met with the show's choreographer, Darlene Culp, a teacher at Mountlake Terrace High School. Along the way, he learned about 1920s-1940s vaudeville and burlesque.

"Seeing what happened to the relationship after Tulsa's out of the picture, it really makes me think that as much as Rose was very determined and at times blind to what she was doing, she was also a mother to these kids," Shindler said.

Lyricist Sondheim's mother was said to be overbearing and self-centered, drafting her son to be a surrogate husband after she divorced Sondheim's dad. It was no stretch for him to create words for the character of Rose, played by Laura Abel in this production. (Abel's husband, Mark, plays Herbie, Rose's manager and love interest.)

"What makes Rose tick is that her mom abandoned her when she was very little, and Seattle was not the high life, and she wanted something bigger," Pope said. "And so she had a desperate, desperate need for attention and recognition and validation."

"At the end," Ilika said, "she accepts that, what she's gone through with her mother.

"And I think that's also an important message for young people. So many kids idolize their mother or parents or any authority figure in general, and they figure out they're not perfect. But in the end, they're still so important in shaping lives."

Diane Wright: 425-745-7815 or dwright@seattletimes.com