Gypsy
Hayes Theatre, May 22, until June 30
★★★★½

It was hatched at night, about three weeks into rehearsals. Although Stephen Sondheim, to his frustration, had been employed to write only the lyrics, not the music, this night he sat at the piano and mashed up fragments of composer Jule​ Styne's​ existing songs, splicing together the mixed emotions that constituted Rose's ultimate clash with reality and consequent breakdown. Rose's Turn became not just Gypsy's finale, but its masterpiece. In this performance Blazey​ Best chews it up and spits it out, her disintegration like the shattering of a window on to all you have been watching for the past three hours.

Hers is a different Rose: not so much a maternal gargoyle as a human version of a living tree with a hollowed-out trunk. If the missing heartwood was supposed to be Baby June, then older June, and then Louise, all the daughters in the world could never fill a cavity this immense, not even when Louise, as burlesque queen Gypsy Rose Lee, has her name in lights on Broadway.

Although Best's Rose is still relentless, she also catches the key motif of Arthur Laurents' book and of Sondheim's lyrics: she is a dreamer – not, in some fey, winsome way, but a deeply disappointed woman whose dreams are expressed through gritted teeth. Indeed Best has perfected the hitherto unknown art of singing through gritted teeth. Even when her intonation sometimes wavers it could almost be intentional; in keeping with a character who is that saddest of all the shades, echoes, misfits and wannabes choking show-business: an amateur who thinks she's a professional.

Besides wanting to be the composer, Sondheim was wary of Gypsy's show-biz scenario. Rose, however, is not just a show-biz mama: she could just as easily be a ruthless tennis mum, a parent who piles on academic pressure until the child explodes, or a parent simply living vicariously through the child.

This is a bristling production of one of the greatest musicals of all, underpinned by a peerless book from Laurents: an entirely credible straight play, from which the songs of Styne​ – his finest – and Sondheim spring about as organically as songs in musicals ever can. Understanding this, director Richard Carroll has ensured the show has a flow that makes its three hours fly by, with any hint of its flagging only lasting a minute or two.