Mendes triumphs over backbiters with new Broadway show

After weeks of whispering in the gossip rags about a possible disaster in the making, Sam Mendes has scored an unqualified triumph on Broadway with the opening of his production of the Arthur Laurents-Jule Styne-Stephen Sondheim musical Gypsy.

In glowing notices yesterday, the critics lauded Mr Mendes, the 37-year-old British wunderkind director of stage and screen, for reinventing a classic American musical in much the same way that he deconstructed Cabaret, his last Broadway show, a few years ago.

USA Today called it "the most intuitive and gloriously entertaining Broadway revival since Susan Stroman's The Music Man". "Like Stroman," the paper added, "Mendes understands the importance of sentiment and sheer fun in this great American art form."

The show had its first night at the Schubert Theatre on Thursday night.

The New York Times wondered whether some of Mr Mendes' fans might not be disappointed by the way he played the piece – a story of stage ambition and belated self-realisation based on the life of the burlesque dancer Gypsy Rose Lee – relatively straight. The paper nevertheless praised the show for conveying "a heightened sense of the seediness of the backstage world ... There's less fairytale prettiness to the vaudeville sets. And Mr Mendes doesn't shrink from showing just how mediocre Rose's touring acts are."

The $8.5m (£5.3m) production had been dogged by sniping on the internet and in the pages of the New York Post. The 84-year-old Arthur Laurents, who wrote the original story, was reported to have disapproved of what Mendes was doing to his baby. Not true, he was forced to respond. The press, he said, "was lurking around looking for trouble".

Then there were murmurs that the leading actress, Bernadette Peters, wasn't cutting the mustard. Not only was she struggling with her interpretation of the role, the naysayers said, but some worried that her voice was overtaxed and unable to endure the demands of a long night. When Ms Peters dropped out for several preview performances, replaced by her understudy, the writing truly seemed to be on the wall.

But it turned out that she was suffering from nothing more than a cold, and her performance was hailed yesterday as a tour de force. The New York Times wrote: "Working against type and expectation under the direction of Sam Mendes, Ms Peters has created the most complex and compelling portrait of her long career." In fact, the paper added, she had managed what no other actress had managed in 55 years: she had escaped from under the shadow of Ethel Merman, who created the role in indelible fashion on its original opening.

Mendes – taking a break from the film world after the Oscar-winning triumph of American Beauty and the more mixed reception accorded to his period gangster piece Road to Perdition – told reporters in New York he had paid no attention to the sniping. "My rule in previews is: you don't read anything," he said. "You keep your head down and work."

HITS...

JUDI DENCH, 'AMY'S VIEW' The play opened on Broadway in 1999 just weeks after Dench won an Oscar for playing Elizabeth I and the subsequent selling out of the play showed that she could play the Queen of Broadway with consummate ease.

DENISE VAN OUTEN, 'CHICAGO' Van Outen was the only British star on the cast and won critical acclaim for her performance as Roxie Hart, which was a far cry from her early (morning) days with the 'Big Breakfast'.

...AND MISSES

HENRY GOODMAN, THE PRODUCERS After his successes in the West End with 'Guys and Dolls', 'Assassins' and 'Chicago', British actor Henry Goodman seemed the perfect choice for the part of Max Bialystok. A few weeks of previews later he had been replaced.

TREVOR NUNN, 'OKLAHOMA!' Despite opening to good reviews, Sir Trevor Nunn's 2002 production of the Royal National Theatre's 'Oklahoma!' closed after less than a year. US critics said the production lacked insight into the American viewpoint apparently needed to make a hit.