Is “Gypsy” starring Barbra Streisand back on track?

I’d love to see Barbra Streisand play Mama Rose in a new big screen version of Gypsy and sincerely hope that she and everyone else involved can get this show on the road.

Nikki Finke reports today that the project appears to be back on track with the hiring of writer Richard LaGravenese to adapt the musical.

Streisand, who did a splendid job directing herself in the 1983 musical Yentl, may also direct.

Streisand may be 72 but she proved in her most recent film The Guilt Trip that she still looks terrific on the big screen and decades younger.

And her most recent concert tour and TV special, Back to Brooklyn, showed that she’s still got the pipes to deliver great showstoppers like Rose’s Turn, Everything’s Coming Up Roses and Some People.

Ethel Merman was the original Mama Rose on Broadway followed by revivals starring Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Bernadette Peters and Patti LuPone.

Merman was passed over for the first feature film version in favor of Rosalind Russell whose biggest numbers were dubbed by Lisa Kirk. Bette Midler played the role in a three-hour TV version for CBS in 1993, was nominated for an Emmy and won a Golden Globe.

Below is video from one of Streisand’s 2012 concerts in which she performs parts of Rose’s Turn and Some People.