Patti LuPone

by Patti Lupone

  Early Evita.

  Copyright © 2010 by Patti LuPone

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crown Archetype, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. www.crownpublishing.com

  Crown Archetype with colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  LuPone, Patti.

  Patti LuPone: a memoir / Patti LuPone.—1st ed.

  1. LuPone, Patti. 2. Singers—United States—Biography.

  3. Actors—United States—Biography. I. Title.

  ML420.L9355A3 2010

  782.1′4092—dc22

  [B] 2010008965

  eISBN: 978-0-307-46075-2

  “A Hundred Years from Today”: Words and music by Victor Young, Joseph Young, and Ned Washington. Copyright © 1933 (renewed) EMI Robbins Catalog Inc., Patti Washington Music, Catherine Hinen and Warock Corp. Exclusive worldwide print rights for EMI Robbins Catalog Inc. controlled and administered by Alfred Music Publishing Co., Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  “Broadway Melody”: Music by Nacio Herb Brown; lyrics by Arthur Freed. Copyright © 1929 (renewed) EMI Robbins Catalog Inc. All rights controlled by EMI Robbins Catalog Inc. (publishing) and Alfred Music Publishing Co., Inc. (print). All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  Unless otherwise indicated, all photographs are from the collection of Patti LuPone.

  v3.1

  For

  MATT AND JOSH,

  my family

  contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Opening Night, Gypsy

  BROADWAY, 2008

  1

  Northport, Long Island

  1949–1968

  2

  The Audition

  NEW YORK CITY, 1968

  3

  The Making of an Actor

  JUILLIARD, 1968–1972

  4

  The Acting Company

  1972–1976

  5

  The Baker’s Wife, or Hitler’s Road Show

  1976

  6

  David Mamet and Me

  7

  Evita, Part 1

  AUDITION AND OUT OF TOWN, 1979

  8

  Evita, Part 2

  NEW YORK AND SYDNEY, 1979–1981

  9

  A Working Actor, Part 1

  1982–1985

  10

  The Cradle Will Rock, Les Misérables, LBJ, A Sicilian in Sicily

  1985–1987

  11

  Anything Goes, Driving Miss Daisy, Life Goes On, A New Life

  1987–1992

  12

  Sunset Boulevard, Part 1

  SEPTEMBER 1992–JULY 1993

  13

  Sunset Boulevard, Part 2

  JULY 1993–MARCH 1994

  14

  A Working Actor, Part 2

  1994–2000

  15

  Several Sweeney Todds, and Sondheim

  2000, 2001, 2005

  16

  Gypsy

  RAVINIA, AUGUST 2006–ENCORES!, JULY 2007

  17

  Gypsy

  BROADWAY, FEBRUARY 2008–JANUARY 2009

  Epilogue

  Closing Night, Gypsy

  BROADWAY, JANUARY 2009

  Coda

  Acknowledgments

  It’s a curious thing. I suppose most people think of artists as impatient, but I don’t know of any first-rate artist who hasn’t manifested in his career an appalling patience, a willingness to wait, and to do his best now in the expectation that next year he will do better.

  —MARK VAN DOREN

  (from The Dialogues of Archibald MacLeish and Mark Van Doren)

  © JOAN MARCUS

  Prologue

  Opening Night, Gypsy

  BROADWAY, 2008

  I’ve opened Gypsy four times. The first time, I played Louise (aka Gypsy) in the Patio Players’ production of the musical. I was fifteen years old. The Patio Players were a group of kids from Northport, Long Island, who got together in the summer and performed big Broadway musicals on Cathy Sheldon’s patio. Cathy was a founding member of the Patio Players as well as our star. In just a few short years these productions, attended by many in the Northport community, began to take their toll on the Sheldons’ patio and lawn, so David Babcock, our artistic director, approached the superintendent of Northport Schools. We were miraculously given permission to run amok in the junior high school parking lot, where we built the sets, in the home economics classroom, where we created the costumes (when they weren’t being sewn on volunteer mothers’ sewing machines), and in the auditorium, where we would now present our musicals. We were a big operation.

  All I remember about opening night, at Middleville Junior High School, was that the live lamb freaked out in the spotlight while I was singing Louise’s song “Little Lamb.” He broke free from me and started clomping and bah-ing all over the darkened stage. I learned how to sing through laughter that night. He was fine in the dress rehearsal. Opening night nerves, I guess. You know what they say: “Good dress, bad opening” and vice versa. Most likely he had indigestion from eating my mother’s laundry. I was in charge of the sheep for some reason … bonding, perhaps? I recall my mother screaming at me on opening day, “Patti Ann! Tie up that damn sheep!”

  Lambs are born in the spring. We performed in the summer. The lamb was, unfortunately, a sheep. This sheep was going crazy. I was afraid the sheep would fall into the orchestra pit in his desperate attempt to escape. Somehow as I continued singing the tender ballad on a pitch-black stage with only a blue tinted spotlight on me, the frantic sheep was caught before he crapped on everything. They put him in the boys’ bathroom offstage right, unaware that the tiled bathroom would increase the volume and reverberate his bah-ing throughout the theatre. At poignant moments in the play, we would hear the plaintive wail of a very unhappy sheep. That’s all I remember—except for stripping in front of my biology teacher.

  Forty-four years later in August 2006, I opened Gypsy for the second time. Only this time I was playing the character of Rose at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois.

  The Ravinia Festival, on the grounds of Ravinia Park, is the oldest outdoor music festival in the country. From June till September, the festival presents concerts and performances for thousands of people who sit in the Pavilion Theatre, or in Martin Hall, or picnic on the lawn. Whenever I walk the grounds, I think what a great way for a kid to grow up—climbing the kid-friendly sculptures while Beethoven, played by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, is wafting into their tiny subconscious minds. Ravinia has a very large, multigenerational, and loyal audience plus some of the hippest camping equipment I’ve ever seen. The people with lawn tickets are serious about their concert-going experience. On any given night you can see linen, crystal, and Crock-Pots on Eddie Bauer tables inside L.L. Bean tents.

  A musical theatre production presented on the Pavilion stage requires intense preparation and a certain amount of abandon because you have at the most two weeks to put on a Broadway musical. This Gypsy was highly anticipated because for half of those forty-four years I had been told by fans, friends, and colleagues that I should play Rose Hovick, Gypsy and June’s mother. When I read the script I did not see the “monster stage mother” that had become the standard description of Rose. I hooked into her love for her children and her desire to do only her best for them, however misguided those intentions were. That’s the way I wanted to play her. It was a departure.

  My director, Lonny Price, cast a company of extraordinary performers. I wa
s told that some of the “farm boys” flew in from New York City just to audition for it. Lonny somehow convinced the CEO of the festival, Welz Kauffman, that he needed three weeks of rehearsal for this production, which would include our technical week. The technical week is when all the physical elements of the production come together for the first time onstage: sets, lights, props, costumes, staging, and choreography. Everybody involved works ten hours a night trying to coordinate all these elements while also attempting to get the show to under two hours of playing time. It’s an exhausting week … then we open! Who came up with that schedule, I’d love to know.

  The lawn of the Ravinia Festival can accommodate up to 14,000 people. The Pavilion Theatre seats 3,200 people. Most Broadway houses seat half as many as the Pavilion. If a production is successful at Ravinia, we play to over ten thousand people a night. As I understand it, the Pavilion and the lawn were heavily sold for the three nights we performed Gypsy. I don’t remember much about this opening night. I was too nervous. I don’t think I gave anybody an opening night card, which is simply a note of good luck and gratitude: one of the theatre’s sweet traditions. I just buried my head, focused, and went out there.

  Word of mouth about this Gypsy was so good that various producers began vying for the rights to remount this production in London or New York. I waited for word from Lonny Price that Arthur Laurents, who is the show’s librettist and controls the rights, would give the consent for the production to proceed. It was a frustrating wait.

  Finally I called my longtime friend and press agent, Philip Rinaldi, for his advice. He asked me what my relationship with producer Scott Rudin was. Scott was Arthur Laurents’s best friend. Philip suggested that I call Scott. I did but I couldn’t get past the receptionist. Philip then called Scott’s partner, press agent John Barlow. John paved the way for Scott and me to connect. Scott simply told me to call Arthur Laurents myself. Now, there is a long story here concerning Arthur and me and my banishment from Arthur’s work, which included Gypsy.

  It all started when Arthur offered me his play Jolson Sings Again. I didn’t do it, but let’s save that story for another chapter.

  For the moment let’s just say Arthur Laurents was really mad at me—really, really mad at me. I now had to call Arthur and plead with him to bring Gypsy back to New York only five years after the last revival. I dialed the number. Arthur answered. “Hello, Arthur, it’s Patti.”

  “Yes, I know,” he said. I cringed, waiting for the onslaught of five years of Arthur’s pent-up anger that was sure to follow. Instead, what I got was a compliment on my performance as Nellie Lovett in Sweeney Todd. WHAT?

  Then we began to talk about Gypsy. He said he wanted to do it, that he would also direct it, and that this production of Gypsy would be different. He wanted less bravura and more acting. We talked about casting. We talked about Rose, and I said up front that I couldn’t play her as she had been played in the past. There would be no point in bringing Gypsy back to Broadway if I couldn’t do my interpretation of Rose—under his direction, of course. He agreed.

  Arthur mulled over offers from the various producers and settled on Jack Viertel’s Encores! Summer Stars series at City Center. The City Center Encores! series brings musicals back to life that would most likely never see another revival. The shows are performed only three times. However, the Encores! Summer Stars series gives these productions a longer run. We had a home in New York. We were off and running. There was never another word about Jolson Sings Again.

  We went into rehearsal in June 2007. The cast was the best I have ever worked with in my career. Arthur directed me wisely, lovingly, and supportively. We put the past behind us and forged a friendship. I got to work with one of Broadway’s best actors, Boyd Gaines, and I discovered that beautiful jewel Laura Benanti.

  City Center would not pay for the entire company to rehearse for three weeks, so Arthur wisely asked Jack Viertel if he could have the eleven principals for the first week. Jack agreed. We sat around a table listening to Arthur talk about this musical and what it meant to him while he interjected great, gossipy stories about the original players and a couple of other celebrities he knew. We were spellbound. The room was filled with love and laughter. Boyd, Laura, and I questioned Arthur relentlessly about the meaning of certain scenes. Arthur started to rethink his script as perhaps he had never done before. That one very special week around the table allowed us to explore what I consider to be the best book of a musical ever written.

  We opened in July of 2007. I barely remember this opening night, because the pressure was on me. This was not Highland Park, Illinois. This was New York City, New York. I don’t think I gave opening night cards to the company on this occasion, either. Maybe I did. All I know is that I loved being in the City Center building again. I consider it one of my theatrical homes in Manhattan. It’s where I performed with The Acting Company in the seventies, and where I’d done two very successful performances for Encores! (one of which was my first time back on a New York stage after an unfortunate excursion to London—more about that later). The theatre was not new to me: one important obstacle eliminated.

  The audience was rapturous on opening night. Before the show, the producers of City Center and all of the potential Broadway producers came to my dressing room and were over the moon with happiness. We opened gloriously. We just knew we were moving to Broadway. Then Ben Brantley’s review came out, followed by Charles Isherwood’s review, both in the New York Times. They were duly unimpressed with my performance. Regardless, we were sold out for our entire run with near-hysterical audiences. At the end, it appeared I would only play Gypsy in three productions and never make it to Broadway. But fate had something else in store. It’s absolutely true: If it’s meant to be, it will be. Despite tepid reviews from the Times, on March 27, 2008, we opened our City Center production at the St. James Theatre on Broadway.

  We went through another three-week rehearsal period with Arthur, most of it spent around our beloved table, reading and investigating the play once again. When I revisited Rose, she had sunk further down into my gut and my psyche. I came back to her more centered and calm. The greatest joy I could have gotten was that our entire City Center Company minus one person—Nancy Opel—reprised their roles. It was a reunion of old friends and recognizable characters.

  Broadway opening nights are a relief, but that’s not what they used to be. They used to be the most hair-raising and nerve-racking performance of the run because it was the night that all of the critics showed up. Today the critics see the play in the last week of previews, so opening night is about family, friends, and the friends of the 25,000 producers. This time I had the presence of mind to be the leading lady and distribute the gifts and good wishes to everybody in the St. James Theatre.

  Whenever I return to Broadway, I try to have the same people in my dressing room. It’s my insurance that there will be laughter in that room. I had the inimitable Pat White, my very own Thelma Ritter, as my dresser; Vanessa Anderson as my hairdresser; Laura Skolnik of the Ravinia Festival as my personal assistant; and Pam Combs Lyster, one of my oldest friends, to pick up the slack. Angelina Avallone, Broadway’s premier makeup artist, was there as well, in and out of the room. I was surrounded by five of the most fantastic women I will ever hope to associate with in the theatre.

  I was calm on opening night, knowing that the ladies of the dressing room had distributed my cards and gifts in the morning before I got to the theatre. I arrived in plenty of time to read the cards attached to the flowers my friends had sent me, and to negotiate all of the people coming in and out of my dressing room wishing me luck. Champagne was uncorked. My husband, Matt, and son, Joshua, stayed with me till curtain, the producers came in and out with love and hugs, my longtime friends stopped by for a kiss, cast members threw me luck. Steve Sondheim sat on the couch and chatted with Matt and me about anything and everything. Everybody had a drink in their hand and a huge smile on their face. I was ready, I was in costume, it was
fifteen minutes to the places call. Steve wished me luck and left to take his seat. At ten minutes to places, Arthur walked into my dressing room.

  The room emptied as if on cue, except for Matt. There was a look in Arthur’s eye that totally scared me. I knew he was going to tell me something that I didn’t want to hear. He said it, anyway: “I know the review from the New York Times.” Tears started to well up in his eyes and I said in my mind, No, no, please, Arthur, no. Don’t tell me now! I have to go out and do this show.

  “You got what you deserve. It’s a rave,” he said. We started crying and hugged each other. It was a rave for all of us. But it was more than that for me; it was vindication. Matt grabbed Arthur and said, “Have you actually seen it?” Matt would not believe it until he saw it with his own eyes.

  Places for the company was called. Matt and Arthur left my dressing room. Pat White and I walked to the back of the house, Pat making me laugh as always, and both of us relieved we were finally opening the show. Besides everything else it implied, it meant no more twelve-hour days in technical rehearsals.

  The overture began and the audience went nuts. On my cue, I walked down the house right aisle and up onto the stage to an ovation I couldn’t see but could certainly hear. I kept my back to the audience and waited to start. I was exhausted from everything—the rehearsals, the previews, the sickness I always get when I walk into a new theatre, the long and fated road to Broadway, finally playing Rose in Gypsy. When the ovation died down, I played the show as we had rehearsed it. I went to the opening night party for about an hour, went home with Matt and Joshua, and the next day settled in for the Broadway run of Arthur Laurents’s, Jule Styne’s, and Stephen Sondheim’s Gypsy, my fourth production. The following story is about what happened to me from the time I fell in love with the audience at age four, to that crazy sheep in the boys’ room at Middleville Junior High School, to my closing night at the St. James Theatre.…

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