Congratulations, Pentacle, and congratulations director Jo Dodge. It works.

Complicated set design is handled cleverly with revolving scenery and cheeky blatancy - a large sign reads "Home Sweet Home, Seattle" - that allows a brick wall backdrop to remain appropriate for nearly all the scenes. The director utilizes strobe lights and high-spirited dancing to pull off a creative age transition for its young actors, a stunt clever enough to bring murmurs of appreciation from the audience.

Costume Designer David Cristobal's costumes are a large part of the play's entertainment, whether it is the forever-Baby June's dresses, which increase in both pinkness and grotesqueness with each scene or the oddly beguiling asymmetry of Mama Rose's red dress.

Chris Fletcher's brassy authority as Mama Rose catches hold of the audience as soon as she first marches down the center aisle to the stage. Her singing voice is powerful and perfect, almost too big for the theatre, sometimes eclipsing the other talented actors who sing with her. The stolid Herbie, a counter to her brashness, is played warmly by David Hastings.  

Playing the (mostly) grown up version of her daughter Louise is Amanda Fischel, who drowns in her oversized costumes and sense of her own unworthiness. Fischel plays this sweetly and believably. But her transformation in the last scenes to Gypsy Rose Lee, a strong young woman who has finally come into her own, does not ring true. In all fairness, to ask any young actress to project power and confidence while walking naked in front of 100 strangers perhaps isn't something to expect opening night (even with a figure as flawless as Fischel's). The confidence needed to pull off the transformation might grow in time.

No extra confidence is needed for the funniest scene in the play, the song "You Gotta Get A Gimmick." Susan McCaffrey, Carissa Bennett, and Geri Lyne Greeno portray three of the roughest strippers burlesque has to offer. These women (and their masterful costume designer) brought down the house and matched ending-bow applause with the leading lady.

For tickets and information on future "Gypsy" performances visit pentacletheatre.org.