Patti LuPone

by Patti Lupone

  “We’re really going to miss you tonight, Patti,” he said.

  It was March 12, 1987, and it was opening night of Les Misérables on Broadway.

  Noooooooooo! Holy shit! How did this happen? How did I end up being in New York on the night I most wanted to be someplace else, anyplace else?

  I cried my eyes out that night, second-guessing myself mercilessly about not being in the cast. Had I made the wrong decision? Had I done something really foolish? It took awhile before I had my answer. One night, several months later, John Caird called me. “Come on, Patti,” he said. “I’m in New York. Let’s go pick up Frankie.”

  In the year or so since I’d been in London, John and his wife had split up. He was now dating Frances “Frankie” Ruffelle, who played Eponine. She and Colm Wilkinson had been the only two original London cast members to cross the Atlantic with the production. As John and I stood in the back of the house to wait for her, I was immediately glad that I was not up there onstage. What I saw was a pale imitation of the show as I knew it. I must have had some sort of premonition that I would have been miserable. Knowing my temperament, if I had been involved in this imitation of the original production, I would have had a fit. Worse yet, I would not have been able to hold my tongue.

  This is how producers mass-produce hits. They “freeze” the show the way the first cast created it. When it’s a hit, they want to impose the characterization that the original actor discovered onto every actor who follows in the part.

  That’s why they had wanted me to mimic Elaine Paige’s every gesture as Eva. Now they wanted Randy Graff to duplicate mine as Fantine. They won’t let the second, third, or fourth cast discover the play for themselves. It’s not that the New York company didn’t have competent actors and strong voices—they did—but to impose somebody else’s interpretation on them was unfair. Like any carbon copy, it could never be as sharp as the original. At least that’s what I thought I saw, and I knew I had made the right decision.

  11

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

  1987–1992

  Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes.

  © BRIGITTE LACOMBE

  Matt and I were officially a couple living in New York when I got a call to audition for a new production of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes. I mentioned the audition to the wonderful photographer Jack Mitchell during a photo session. Jack had been photographing me since the early days of The Acting Company. His studio walls were covered with portraits of the leaders and creative forces in the performing arts. It was an inspiring gallery of dancers, opera singers, writers, and actors. When I told him I was up for the part of Reno Sweeney, he gave me the last photo he took of Ethel Merman, who had originated the role in 1934.

  It was my good-luck charm. At the beginning of my audition, I turned upstage, then turned back to the room with the photo of Ethel in front of my face as I spoke my line. I don’t know what possessed me, but it got a laugh.

  I got the part and started rehearsing this fantastic piece of American theatre history. We were extremely lucky to have Timothy Crouse, the son of Russel Crouse, who was one of the 1934 revisionists for the original Anything Goes book, and John Weidman as our new book writers. Timmy had his dad’s original script to refer to with the original gags and all … the history.

  We rehearsed in the bowels of the Vivian Beaumont Theater. As I wandered the hallways, peering into every room and exposed crevice that made up the rehearsal spaces, scenic shop, wardrobe room, and offices, I felt as though my moment had finally arrived. It validated all the time and money my mother had invested in me for those Long Island lessons. It validated the Juilliard experience—all of it—good, great, and painful. I was working at Lincoln Center, something I had aspired to so long ago. I remember a day at Juilliard when I was looking out of a window over to the plaza, just daydreaming. The dream was to one day walk that plaza on my way to work at Lincoln Center Theater. It took me twenty years to achieve that dream. Another twenty years have passed and I’m back where I started, wishing I could work at Lincoln Center Theater. If they wait much longer, look for me in a revival of The Gin Game.

  I was reunited with Bernard Gersten for the Anything Goes production. I had met Bernie at the Public Theater when my brother Bobby was doing A Chorus Line in 1975. Joe Papp and Bernie were running the Public then. I ended up there a year later in the play Stage Directions with John Glover and Ellen Greene, who became my fast and lifelong friends. Now that Bernie was executive producer of Lincoln Center Theater, I was coming full circle. Everything made sense. More dots were connected. I felt safe, happy, and productive knowing that Bernie was upstairs in the Beaumont offices. To me, Bernie has always been a benevolent producer and protector.

  Our director was Jerry Zaks and the choreographer was Michael Smuin. Howard McGillin and Bill McCutcheon were my leading men and great fun to work with. Howard remains one of my favorite leading men. He was so beautiful to gaze at every night, always had a smile in his eyes when we played our scenes together, and stopped me dead in my tracks whenever he sang “All Through the Night” and “You’d Be So Easy to Love.” He wasn’t singing to me. I was offstage doing yet another twelve-second quick change.

  Tony Walton, responsible for the genius sets and costumes, dressed me like I’ve never been dressed before. Pat White, my very own Thelma Ritter, worked those quick changes like an entire pit crew in a NASCAR race.

  “Friendship.”

  © BRIGITTE LACOMBE

  Our rehearsal period was inventive, crazy fun, and long. It was the longest preview period I’d ever had, which was a very good thing and I wished happened more often. The longer you play the part, the more familiar the character becomes to you, obviously. It sounds simplistic, but the longer you play the play, you know that environment and the audience that much better. The audience is half of a stage actor’s performance. They supply information an actor can’t possibly know until there’s that interaction. When that extraordinary rapport occurs between actor and audience, the fun begins. Our long preview period for this production garnered great reviews, the icing on the cake. This time I didn’t have to be afraid of opening the New York Times the morning after.

  Our opening night was October 18, 1987, forever known as Black Thursday because the stock market took a huge dive that day. David Ingraham, my old friend and an arbitrage stockbroker, had tickets for opening night but never showed up. His company took a massive hit. In the opening moments of the show, Eli Whitney (Rex Everhart) talks about a stock he wants Billy Crocker (Howard McGillin) to sell. Those audience members who did show up opening night—we played to about half a house—laughed uproariously at the reference. It was a sudden bit of unexpected magic.

  Matt and me at the Anything Goes album release.

  Frank Rich gave Anything Goes a rave review in the Times and wrote me a love letter. I wrote him one back. The show was a hit, and I was a hit in it. I didn’t escape bad reviews entirely, however. Several complained about my diction. It was the second time in my career my diction was brought to my attention. I didn’t know what they were talking about. I understood me—what was their problem? I think it was the sound mixer, I really do. He sucked. And that other time they complained? That was someone else’s fault, too, I’m sure.

  Anything Goes went a long way toward finally freeing me from the tap-dancing blond fascist that Evita had made me. After years of what I used to call “crying and dying” onstage, not just in Evita, but in Oliver! and Les Misérables as well, suddenly everyone discovered that I could be funny. What happened to the Tony nomination for The Robber Bridegroom in 1976? That was slapstick and I was rollickingly funny in it. Broadway has a short memory.

  A few months into the run, Bernie came into my dressing room and said, “Do you want to go to London with this production?”

  “Yes, yes, yes!” I said out loud once again, only this time I also said, “Get in touch with my agent.” No, I didn’t, of course I said yes. I tho
ught it would be the perfect contrast to my last West End appearance in Les Misérables—an American musical comedy classic and one of the great female parts in all of musical comedy history. From Bernie’s question, I assumed that Lincoln Center Theater would be bringing its first production to London starring me as Reno Sweeney.

  A short time later Tim Rice came to my dressing room one night after the show. “Just wonderful, Patti, great fun, what larks,” he said. I soon found out that after my visit with Tim, he optioned our production for London to star Elaine Paige, and Lincoln Center Theater (LCT) gave it to him! Our show was a huge success, but LCT decided not to produce it in London. Howard McGillin was the only member of our company who made the trip. I was pissed off, but I also thought it was divine justice. I took Elaine’s part, Eva Perón, here. She took my part, Reno Sweeney, there. It didn’t soothe the wound, however. I still can’t understand why Lincoln Center Theater didn’t bring our company en masse to London and produce it themselves—like the RSC has done on Broadway. I wish there was greater reciprocity between London and New York, especially when it comes to entire companies.

  By this time Matt and I were no longer just living together, we were engaged, but I was having trouble figuring out where to have the wedding. I couldn’t decide between Northport, where I grew up, and Manhattan, where I was working. I told Bernie about my problem and he offered a wonderful solution: “My wife, Cora, and I got married on the Ansbacher stage at the Public Theater twenty-five years ago, and we’re still married. Why not get married on the stage of the Vivian Beaumont?”

  Sealed with a kiss. We’re married.

  Which is exactly what Matt and I did on December 12, 1988. The finale in Anything Goes is a wedding scene, so Tony Walton added extra doves and streamers to the existing set. My father came back east from San Diego and walked me down the aisle. Our processional music was Wedding Day at Troldhaugen by Edvard Grieg. The minister who officiated the service was Fred Ingraham, my dear friend David’s twin brother. When the ceremony was over and we were pronounced man and wife, the music blared “Stars and Stripes Forever,” Matt’s choice. It was a wonderful, joyful event and it was the first time my mother and father had been in the same room in more than twenty years. We were given Fred and his then-wife Sally’s villa in St. Barth for our honeymoon. After a raucous reception in a place downtown called the Loft, serenaded by Kit McClure’s all-girl Big Band, with tons of family, friends, and Anything Goes cast mates, Matt and I headed off to St. Barth for two weeks.

  Jerry Zaks and Mandy Patinkin at our wedding, 1988.

  After the honeymoon I went happily back to Anything Goes because if there’s one thing I love in the theatre, it’s the sound of an audience weeping with laughter. This was a stunning and uproariously funny musical. We played to giddy audiences for months. One night I was feeling depressed while I was standing backstage at places. The show began, as it always did, with the taped voice of Cole Porter singing the first-act finale number, “Anything Goes,” then our kick-ass Broadway band picked up where the tape ended, playing the glorious, romantic, and rambunctious overture. My face went from a frown to a huge smile. That show was just so infectious. You couldn’t help but feel good.

  I received my third Tony nomination, my second nod for Best Actress in a Musical. In fact, the production received ten nominations for the 1988 season. In all of the newspapers across the country, from New York to L.A., I was predicted to win—predicted to win hands down. I thought I was good in the part but this was a huge validation of my performance. I tried to keep it all in perspective, but as I said, we were a hit, and now with ten Tony nominations we became a gigantic hit. We were also the underdog. That season saw the original productions of Phantom of the Opera and Into the Woods. All three musicals received multiple nominations. The Tony Awards night arrived and I was dressed to the nines on my way to my big night. It had been eight years between nominations—eight years since my win for Evita. The company and I had to perform the musical number “Anything Goes” live. My microphone was still on as I turned upstage at one point during the song. The audience heard me wail, “Oh my God!” The nerves were so intense.

  It was now time for my category to be announced. I waited patiently as the nominees were read. “And the 1988 Tony Award goes to … Joanna Gleason for Into the Woods!” I sat there and watched Joanna pick up her award. During her acceptance speech, I felt like I was having a flashback on an acid trip. She looked like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz. What happened? I was supposed to win! It was a bad night for me. Another lesson learned. Don’t believe your own press. Somewhere, give it time, there’s a banana peel with your name on it. I returned to the show, thrilled as we all were, for Bill McCutcheon’s win for Best Featured Actor in a Musical, Michael Smuin for Choreography, and our Tony win for Best Revival.

  Unfortunately, the longer our show ran, the more eager I was to leave. In a long run, things backstage can go rancid faster than you can sneeze, and it did with Anything Goes because of just a few discontents. Despite having a great director, Jerry Zaks, a great choreographer, Michael Smuin, and a wonderful cast of veteran actors, ultimately Anything Goes ended up not being a happy show. The problem in this one originated with the dancers, and to a lesser extent with the chorus, both of which were filled with first-timers. LCT is a nonprofit theatre, and salaries tend not to be the size of Broadway paychecks. As a result, we didn’t get a full roster of A-team dancers and singers. We ended up with a group of mostly C-team players, and they conducted themselves that way. We did have some disciplined, experienced singers and dancers who knew backstage etiquette and their responsibility to the production, just not enough of them to make a difference. I take my hat off to Dale Hensley, Richard Korthaze, Jane Lanier, Gerry McIntyre, and Rob Ashford among those pros.

  This inexperienced minority had no knowledge of proper backstage behavior. They had no awareness or a point of reference of how rarefied the air at Lincoln Center Theater really was. For instance, and this is a big for instance, everyone had a dressing room with a bathroom in it on stage level. For all they knew, it was like this in every theatre and always had been. They approached their roles in the show with a tremendous sense of entitlement and little sense of responsibility. The veteran actors in our company shared my frustration at the bad attitude of these few individuals. I would have traded my private bathroom for a company of professionals who understood how to conduct themselves onstage and off. (Okay, I wouldn’t have traded my bathroom, but I would have been really, really tempted.)

  Entitlement and arrogance is a virus in musicals because I think directors do not rehearse the book of the musical with the entire ensemble to include the dancers’ and chorus’s participation. It breaks down into quadrants from the first day of rehearsal. “Chorus, go here and learn music. Dancers, learn this choreography over there. Principals, scenes with the director in the next room.” The unity isn’t created from the start. Plays are much different. Each actor learns his responsibility in the play through the table reads, the importance of which musicals seem to ignore. Unbelievable care must be demonstrated from the beginning of a rehearsal period and a director needs to help each member own his part and his responsibility to it. It’s the only explanation I have for the laziness and the amount of missed performances some Broadway companies have to contend with. Thanks to Arthur Laurents, I had a uniquely different experience with the Gypsy company concerning this phenomenon. We had table reads, lots of them, with the entire ensemble present. As a result, the performers owned their roles, loved this play, and wanted to be onstage every night. They never missed a show.

  During my Anything Goes run, I became increasingly more unhappy. An opportunity presented itself that would perhaps shake things up. I was asked to read for a TV pilot. The producers were in New York and wanted to meet with me before my performance. I was now living in Connecticut and commuting to the show. My agent made the appointment. On the day of my meeting I didn’t feel like going to the city earlier
than I had to, so I canceled the appointment. They returned to L.A., but apparently they really wanted to see me, because they called my agent again and asked me to audition on tape.

  I had no expectation that anything would come of it. New York actors frequently tape their movie and TV auditions if they’re not flown to L.A. by their potential employers, but in general we won’t get the parts because the people doing the casting are not in the room. The lack of personal interaction puts us at a disadvantage. We’re also not “local hires” for an L.A.-based show, so it costs money to put us up, rent cars for us, and so forth. And it’s not as if there is a shortage of actors in Los Angeles, right?

  When I started taping the audition, the first thing I did was speak directly into the camera and apologize for not showing up the first time. Then I read the scene. When they got back to me, they told me that my talking to the camera was actually more interesting than the audition I gave. Talk about a left-handed compliment. They then flew the director, Rick Rosenthal, to New York and had me tape about three scenes with a guy named Bill Smitrovich—for five hours on a performance day. I think I finally said, “Gotta go … lie down”—always a good excuse in a pinch.

  It was oil and water with Smitrovich and me from the very beginning. At one point during those five hours he pressed both hands down into my shoulders and said, “We just need to relax.”

  What the fuck? I wondered. I don’t know who you are, but get your hands off me, and exactly who needs to relax?