Patti LuPone

by Patti Lupone

  Sweeney was an extraordinary experience in so many ways—what a way to come back to Broadway in a musical. It had been a long seventeen years since I’d last performed there. Hard to believe, isn’t it? Now, on September 4, I was back to being a working actor again—wondering what was next and waiting for that telephone to ring. I thought Sweeney was as good as it got. Little did I know that yet another twist of fate was going to bring me the best theatrical experience of my life.

  16

  Gypsy

  RAVINIA, AUGUST 2006–ENCORES!, JULY 2007

  “Everything’s Coming Up Roses.”

  RUSSELL JENKINS/RAVINIA FESTIVAL

  Sing out, Louise! is Madame Rose’s opening line from Gypsy, spoken as she walks up the aisle to the stage.

  Rose Hovick—Madame Rose—is commonly stigmatized as the mother of all stage mothers, but that’s not the woman I see. Reading Arthur Laurents’s brilliant script, I don’t see a monster. I don’t hear it in Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics. She may do monstrous things, but that doesn’t make her a monster. I see a misguided woman, a misguided mother, as my mother was misguided, as my grandmother was misguided, as I pray to God every day I am not misguiding my son but probably am. God help the kid.

  I see a woman who loves her daughters. She’s ferociously driven, but she loves her kids. The real Rose Hovick obviously saw talent in them because they both became stars. The stage Rose and the real Rose tried to showcase their talents as best she could, even though she did it in a crude and ultimately destructive way.

  I’d played Louise (Gypsy) with the Patio Players in Northport when I was fifteen years old, but at the time I didn’t pay any attention to the character of Rose. I was a kid—Rose was beyond me. There was no way for me to wrap my brain around the idea of a mother wanting something so desperately for her children, and going to such extremes to get it.

  The first time I played Rose was at the Ravinia Festival in August of 2006. Welz Kauffman and Lonny Price, the director, wanted to do Gypsy.

  But there was one small problem, and that problem was me. “You know that I’m banned from Arthur’s work,” I said to them. “At least as far as I know.”

  About five years earlier, Arthur himself had offered me the lead in his play Jolson Sings Again, and I had agreed to do it. Arthur and I first met in London when I was doing Sunset Boulevard. He and his partner, Tom Hatcher, came backstage and Arthur was very complimentary. We sat and talked for about fifteen minutes. I was thrilled to meet this legendary man and even more thrilled that he took the time to come backstage.

  Almost a month after Arthur and I talked about Jolson Sings Again at his town house in Manhattan, the producer called and made what I considered to be a very insulting offer. I don’t know why he thought I would be willing to work for that amount of money. He said take it or leave it.

  I left it. I soon found out that my doing so caused the project to collapse. I was in Montreal when I received a phone call from a very angry Arthur Laurents. He held me directly and personally responsible for torpedoing Jolson Sings Again. No amount of explanation on my part would calm him down. By the time he hung up on me, I was in tears, shaking.

  Arthur never said so explicitly, but after that blow-up, I’d been told many times by others that he had banned me from all of his work. To be personally blacklisted by this towering figure of the American theatre was heartbreaking, but Lonny and Welz assured me that in terms of doing Gypsy at Ravinia, it was not an issue. Arthur had control over who appeared in full productions of his work, but not over concert productions.

  I took a hiatus from Sweeney Todd to play Rose at Ravinia. We were actually given a longer rehearsal period than usual—three weeks, including the technical—which is still not a lot of time. I remember the night I arrived there. I agreed to start work as soon as I got off the plane. I didn’t even check into the hotel. I was driven straight to the rehearsal room. Lonny was there with Paul Ford, the pianist, and Paul Gemignani, our conductor. We began working on a scene, and Lonny starting asking for immediate acting results.

  There was a lot of pressure on me to deliver this role. Pretty much since Evita, and even more so since Anything Goes, people had been telling me that Madame Rose was the role I was born to play. I was putting pressure on myself, but I was unwilling to let Lonny put any added pressure on me—Lonny or anyone else, for that matter, living or dead. The ghost of Ethel Merman was surely hovering. Ethel was the original Rose. Even though I’d never seen her in the role, and even though other actresses had played the character in subsequent revivals, it was inevitable that many would compare my performance with hers.

  Which was all the more reason I had to make Rose my own. I’d worked with Lonny many times before, and I knew that his job was to get this show on its feet in a very short period of time. Nevertheless, what he was doing was not helpful. As we began rehearsal that night, I thought he was pressing me for way too much, way too soon. As he continued to push, I built into a rage that culminated in a volcanic eruption. “What are you doing? I just got off the plane, I just opened my mouth, and already you want results? I will figure this out in time, but you cannot ask me to deliver results this minute.”

  During the rehearsal period it took my Herbie, Jack Willis, and me together to convince Lonny to ease up a little. “We’re not stupid actors,” we told him. “We know there’s not a lot of time, but we’ve got to discover this organically. We’ll figure it out.” Lonny slowed down because he’s an actor himself and trusted we would.

  It all paid off. Audiences were ecstatic. The place was sold out. We had the Chicago Symphony Orchestra behind us. You rarely hear symphonic orchestras able to play a Broadway score, but under Paul Gemignani’s baton, the orchestra came alive. I took my time and delivered a performance during which my heart was in my throat every minute. A lot of it I didn’t fully understand yet—especially “Rose’s Turn.” I struggled with the choreography. We were handed the “approved” choreography from the Jerome Robbins estate, but I couldn’t figure out how it came about, because on my body it made no sense. On Ethel’s body, it did. Lonny helped me through it as best he could.

  The buzz in the media and within the theatrical community was extremely positive. There was enough excitement generated around the possibility of seeing me continue to play Rose that several major producers bought tickets to fly to Chicago. Only one actually made it. Everybody else canceled because they were too scared to fly. The day before we opened, a terrorist plot to blow up ten commercial aircraft flying between London and New York had been uncovered. The one man who made it to see Gypsy at Ravinia was Jack Viertel, who wanted to mount a full production of the show as part of the Encores! series at City Center.

  And that brought me full circle back to my problem with Arthur Laurents. If Arthur had barred me from performing his work, how could I appear in a full production as Rose at City Center, or indeed anywhere else? I called Philip Rinaldi, my press agent, who suggested I call Scott Rudin, Arthur’s closest friend. I did. “Call Arthur,” Scott said to me.

  The last time I’d spoken with Arthur it had ended so badly that at first I was afraid to make the call. Having been yelled at like that, I didn’t really want to go through it again. On the other hand, I knew what it felt like, so the element of surprise would be eliminated. The last time it had been a shock, but this time I’d be prepared for it, in case it happened again. I was already barred from his work—how much worse could it get? I had nothing to lose, and if I wanted to play Rose, it was a call I would have to make.

  I summoned up all my courage, took a deep breath, and picked up the phone. When Arthur answered, he was gentle and soft-spoken. He complimented my performance as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd. Then he told me he wanted to talk about the future.

  “Patti, I want you to come to New York, and you and I are going to sit down and have a nice, long talk,” he said. “We’re going to do Gypsy. I’m going to direct it myself, and I’m going to cast it with actors.” There was no
anger, no rancor. Just a loud thump when I fell to my knees in gratitude.

  Holy shit! I said to myself. The phone had felt like it weighed a ton when I started to call him; I aged twenty-five years just picking it up. Now, with just a few kind words from Arthur, it was a feather, and that dark cloud of banishment that had been following me for several years just evaporated. What a gigantic relief! The phone call that I had dreaded so much turned out to be the beginning of a wonderful new chapter in my career, and in my relationship with Arthur Laurents.

  When I got to New York, I was anxious. I was so vulnerable to the man. I really didn’t know him, just his reputation. Walking into Arthur’s house, I fought off the memories of the last time I’d been there, when I agreed to do Jolson. But as Arthur spoke about what he wanted to accomplish with Gypsy, my fear dissolved.

  I had to tell Lonny Price that he would not be directing Gypsy.

  “Is this about me?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “It’s about Arthur.”

  That was the absolute truth. During that first conversation in his home, Arthur told me why he had decided to do this. When I went to see him, Tom Hatcher, his life partner of more than fifty years, was already gravely ill. He passed away not long afterward. From his deathbed, Tom had told Arthur, “You have to direct Gypsy, and you have to do it with Patti.” That was one of his dying wishes, but it was less about me than it was about Tom’s desire to keep Arthur alive and creatively productive after he was gone.

  Arthur decided to do the show out of the love that Tom had imparted to him over half a century. This is the love that Arthur then took and gave to all of us, an entire company of actors, around a table. It was a master class in storytelling, and a master class in respect.

  Our rehearsal period started three weeks before opening night. Because of the expense, City Center would not give Arthur the entire cast for that length of time. Arthur asked instead for the eleven principals around a table for the first week and Jack Viertel agreed.

  It was dicey at first. Arthur arrived at the initial read-through with his prompt book and his stage managers from the 1989 production of Gypsy, when Tyne Daly had played Rose. Using that prompt book as a blueprint, he began working with us. He gave us specific line readings and blocking: This is how you get the joke; this is where you move; and no, that’s not the line reading. He was virtually replicating the 1989 show.

  Why? Because you don’t mess with success. I think that in Arthur’s mind, the Tyne Daly Gypsy had been the last successful production. He pretty much disowned the Sam Mendes Gypsy from 2003. It was something of a risk to mount a Gypsy revival less than five years after the last one, and he wanted to stick with what worked. Arthur was almost ninety years old, and his age was a risk of its own. He wanted to make this Gypsy one he could be proud of, not just for his own legacy and sense of accomplishment, but as a way to honor Tom’s dying wish as well.

  That may explain why we started out handcuffed to the 1989 prompt book. As we continued to work from it, the actors started to mentally turn in and collapse. It is almost impossible to replicate another actor’s performance. And we were all actors enough to put our own individual stamp on these timeless characters. Even though we were thwarted at practically every turn, Boyd Gaines (Herbie), Laura Benanti (Louise), and I continued to question Arthur relentlessly about our scenes. Our probing ignited Arthur the playwright to reinvestigate his script, which in turn ignited Arthur the director to redirect his play. As this process took hold, he tossed the old prompt book out and freed us up to explore. With Arthur’s encouragement and guidance, we discovered our own line readings, and in the process he rediscovered the play he wrote.

  Arthur’s transformation was as speedy as it was remarkable. “This is already one of the best times I’ve ever had in the theatre,” he told a reporter at the time. “I don’t care what happens. It’s worth it for this.”

  He grew younger by the day. I could see the light in his eyes. He went from trying to re-create Gypsy to “Let’s see what happens.”

  And what happened was this miracle.

  A whole new play emerged in Arthur’s eyes. He kept saying it was coming out of love. And he stopped us from “acting.”

  “You’re acting,” he’d say. “Stop acting. Just say it!”

  You can imagine our surprise when in the middle of one of our readings he announced that Gypsy had never been rehearsed this way before. All eleven of our jaws dropped. “Excuse us?” we exclaimed, pretty much in unison. “What do you mean?”

  We were shocked, but as we thought about it, we realized that’s the way musicals are usually brought to the stage. Rehearsal time is precious, so only rarely does the company ever sit around a table and read the play.

  And only rarely is the script from a musical worth the time. Gypsy was and is worth reading again and again. There is so much to discover. The scenes are layered and nuanced. The characters are complex and conflicted, Rose most of all. Many have called it the greatest American musical. Certainly it’s got the greatest book of any American musical.

  The eleven of us around the table dove joyously into those layers and nuances, and into the complexities of our characters. Not a note was sung. We spoke the lyrics. We gelled as an ensemble. We played off one another. We supported one another, so that everybody was allowed to fly. By the time the rest of the company joined in, Gypsy was a living, breathing thing, blooming and vibrant in each and every one of us.

  Including Arthur. The more we rehearsed, the more Arthur would engage, the more he fell in love with theatre again. The more he fell in love with us as a company, the more he felt renewed as a human being. And he turned around and gave that all to us as we sat around the table.

  There was so much love and laughter around that table. That single week of table reads was such an extraordinary time that I never wanted to go into performance. I didn’t care if we were in rehearsal for the rest of my life. I did not want to leave this environment, where I was learning and laughing every single day.

  This kind of experience is why I love the stage. For an actor it is exhilarating—and extremely rare—and to have had it twice in a row, first with Sweeney and now with Gypsy, was nothing short of phenomenal. Arthur and I formed a new and meaningful friendship. And, of course, he helped me deepen my portrayal of Rose.

  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I think the problem with characters that become iconic, the way Rose has, is that the portrayals can become petrified. Ethel Merman remains an incredibly powerful presence long after her passing, and her Rose has always been the gold standard. The temptation is to get out the cookie cutter and try to make every Rose thereafter do exactly what she did. For an actor, however, that quickly becomes stifling. It does a disservice to the show, because the performance seems rote—you may be in Rose’s clothes, but you’re not in her skin.

  Actors’ interpretations are highly subjective. You read the script; you’re guided by the playwright’s intentions, but then the development of the character is up to you. That’s why so many great characters are universal: As long as they are fulfilling the needs of the story, most can be played in different ways. That’s why we still love Shakespeare: His heroes and villains are truly timeless. Moreover, Shakespeare’s characters give actors lots of choices in how they portray them.

  Rose is that way as well. Arthur and I talked about her, and I was straightforward with him from the beginning. I told him that very first day that I would interpret her differently from how she had been in the past. It’s not that I intentionally chose to play her in another way; it was far more than simply change for change sake. I actually read her differently within the context of the play. What I saw in Rose was not the “child-flattening maternal steamroller,” as New York Times reviewer Ben Brantley described her. Reading the script, I kept seeing vulnerability and humanity—not that she wouldn’t turn into a tigress at the drop of a hat, but I saw her humanity.

  At one point Herbie calls her “a pioneer woman wit
hout a frontier.” I suspect that what Rose Hovick herself faced in real life was close to the same thing. She was an independent woman with large dreams at a time when women were not independent or allowed to dream such inconceivable things. The tragedy of the play culminates in the ultimate scene with her daughter Gypsy, when she realizes and admits that this desperate attempt to make one of her girls a star was primarily coming from her own desire.

  Opening night was July 9. We opened to a wildly enthusiastic full house. We were sold out for our entire three-week run. It took pride, respect, freedom, and bravery—and yes, a lot of love—to put this show together. It was an extraordinary experience. We were so well rehearsed, and Arthur had given us such freedom, such loving freedom. He was so proud of his actors. And we were proud of ourselves—we thought we’d done well. The producers had assured us that the production would be moving to Broadway.

  Or not. Ben Brantley was less than enthusiastic, and my performance was in his crosshairs. Worse yet, the very thing I wanted most to project as Rose—her humanity—seemed to be what he disliked the most:

  Ms. LuPone has endowed the thwarted Rose with charm, sensuality, a sense of humor, a startling lack of diva vanity and even a spark of bona fide mother love. She has given

  us a human Rose, with doubts and a nagging tug of self-awareness. But once you introduce such traits into Mama Rose, the air starts to leak out of her. Ms. LuPone is less a Rose of billboard-size flair and ego than the sort of pushy but likable woman you might compete with at the supermarket for that last perfect sole fillet.

  Clearly, that was not what I was going for.

  17

  Gypsy

  BROADWAY, FEBRUARY 2008–JANUARY 2009