Since Ethel Merman is the head woman in "Gypsy," which opened at the Broadway last evening, nothing can go wrong. She would not permit "Gypsy" to be anything less than the most satisfying musical of the season….

In the book Arthur Laurents has written for her (based on the memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee) she is the female juggernaut who drives her two daughters into show business and keeps their noses to the grindstone until one of them is a star.

"Gypsy" is a musical tour of the hotel rooms and backstages of the seamy side of show business thirty years ago when vaudeville was surrendering to the strip-tease. Jo Mielziner has designed a savory production. Jule Styne has supplied a genuine show-business score, and Stephen Sondheim has set amusing lyrics to it.

Brooks Atkinson, "Theatre: Good Show!" in The New York Times, May 22, 1959, p. 31.