What? Audra wanted to do the show, for obvious reasons, so the cast was built around her. It’s as simple as that. You might think she’s miscast, but to suggest that a “gimmick” was cranked up to somehow hide her is obtuse.
Are the all-white casts who have done “Gypsy” also a gimmick - which is something not serious or of any real value? Was Tyne Daley being hidden by a bunch of white people when she did an unexpected Rose? (She was great, by the way.) And citing the “Hamilton” cast as a successful example of a theatrical bipoc gimmick, when it is actually central to the show’s meaning and content, exposes more than you know.