Will Tony voters bestow a 7th Tony Award on Fresno’s Audra McDonald? No one knows for sure, but these four local admirers are rooting for her.

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In the meantime, just to remind you all of Audra’s inherent awesomeness, I caught up with four Fresnans who have already made the trek to New York to catch their gal as Mama Rose. I asked: What aspect or specific part of her performance impressed you the most?

J. Daniel Herring

Fresno State theater professor

Favorite moment: The song “Rose’s Turn” (near the end of the second act)

“Rose’s Turn” comes at a time when she no longer really has control of her daughters. One daughter goes out completely on her own by the end of Act One, and then the daughter who becomes Gypsy Rose Lee, the stripper, decides she’s going to do what she wants to do. Rose now doesn’t have the control that she used to have, and she’s thinking if she had had her chance at show business and could have done what she wanted to do, what her dream would have been, or what her turn would have been.

And so she goes into this song. In the way I see it, she imagines herself in front of an audience. We in that theater, that night, we become that audience for her, and she transforms us, in a way, into the audience of her imagination. You are transported.

For anyone who wanted to know what Aristotle meant by the word catharsis, Audra McDonald personifies it in “Rose’s Turn.” There’s no other way to describe it. It’s something that you only see once in a while in a great performance where you see every ounce of emotion. You forget that you’re in the theater. You forget that you’re watching a performance. You take that journey with that actor or actress and go with them and feel that emotion and feel their heart and feel their pain and feel their fear.

Dan Pessano

Good Company Players managing director, Audra’s beloved mentor

Favorite moment: Watching Rose read the letter from June telling her mother that she’s running off with Tulsa (near the end of the first act)

There are about six things that have to happen to Rose in that sequence. She has to read it. She has to understand it. She has to be disappointed, shocked, deserted, hateful, and then there’s a transition to when it finally sinks in that her ticket to what she wants to be for Louise and herself has slipped away. So there’s desperation. Then from desperation, there is the thing that even though she’s sitting there on a suitcase or a bench, she has to rise above that and make a decision about what she’s going to do. And the decision is: She will turn her attention to Louise. All of this is within beats that are all extraordinary: every one of them the right amount of time, the right emotion, the turn, the understanding, the transition, the move toward Louise, and then the song “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” where she grabs Louise like a rag doll.

The other thing is even simpler than that. She finishes “Rose’s Turn.” She’s got the last couple lines with Louise. They walk off. The show immediately goes into the bow. All the people take their bow. They all have their beats in the bow. Audra comes out. Her bow is about 3.1 seconds at most, and that’s travel time to get down to the foot of the stage, bow, walk back up to be part of the company. And that is so moving. It is the entire-company concept. She’s just like that. I just think that’s so important.

It’s hard for me to describe what it’s like for me to watch Audra. I’m just there, you know? I’ve been proven to be somebody by knowing her. And there are a multitude of people that have gained that “something” that she is able to share.

Joel Abels

Theater educator, longtime childhood friend to Audra

Favorite moment: The whole show, but especially “Rose’s Turn”

Very much like “Lady Day,” very much like “Ragtime,” very much like “Porgy and Bess,” she is mesmerizing. From the moment she walks on stage, I cry … till the moment she leaves. Part of that for me is because I know her so well, but part of it is, you’re just in the presence of someone who just feels it so deeply and yet makes it feel so effortless. But I know it’s not effortless, and I know how hard she works, and I know how much she prepares.

“Rose’s Turn” is a master class. I’ve never heard the song sung that way. I’ve never heard the beats that she takes, the inflections that she uses to change the meanings. She sounds like a petulant child at times so angry that she didn’t get her turn. I’m so sad and mad for her in that moment.

You know, this is one of my favorite shows. It’s always been one of my favorite shows since childhood. We did the show together a bazillion years ago, and when we were in high school, I would joke with her, and I mentioned to her on more than one occasion what a great Mama Rose she would be someday, obviously not for a while.

Is she deserving of the Tony Award with that performance? 150% yes. I think “Rose’s Turn” alone is worth it. There are more things coming for her in life. I don’t know that I’ll ever see her do anything like that again.

Armen Bacon

Longtime Audra friend and supporter

Favorite moment: The whole show

I’m not sure what I expected when I saw Audra’s “Gypsy” in November. No matter what the role, she has always sung her heart out and taken on roles that invite/demand/dare her to push beyond traditional or scripted boundaries. This is her gift. She’s fearless and refuses to play it safe.

Why is Audra so good in this production? Aside from her vocal prowess, which is second to none, her portrayal of Mama Rose comes from a place far deeper than most of us can fathom, shaking us to the core ~ a complex mix of strength, fragility, desire, delusion. She gives us a Mama Rose that is raw, real, unstoppable and uncensored ~ never holding back, constant mini-explosions of stage mothering but infused with equal parts love – a mother advocating, insistent, persistent, never giving up on her children (There were scenes when I had to remind myself to breathe). For me, this is what amazes me about Audra – her genius at bringing her characters to life – forcing us to see them as they are: beautifully flawed, tragic yet triumphant.

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