Patti LuPone

by Patti Lupone

  “Together, Wherever We Go.” Kindred spirits, Laura Benanti and Boyd Gaines. PHOTO BY © PAUL KOLNIK

  Gypsy almost choked to death on that sole fillet. Backstage in July 2007 on that City Center opening night, the producers for the Broadway production had been so excited. The show felt right on stage. It felt right out front, too. The audience gave us a standing ovation, not just on opening night, but on every night of our brief three-week run. All of us were so sure we were going to Broadway.

  Then came the Ben Brantley “sole fillet” review.

  It’s a sad reality in my business that one review matters so much, but that’s the way it is. From Brooks Atkinson to Clive Barnes to Walter Kerr to Frank Rich to Ben Brantley, the New York Times critics and their reviews have been make-or-break for Broadway shows and actors for decades. No other publication carries as much weight.

  After the Brantley review came out it looked like there would be no move to Broadway. The Encores! production at City Center would be the end of the road for Gypsy and this magnificent company. Arthur and I made a personal plea to producer Roger Berlind, who said to us, “You would have to be crazy to bring Gypsy to Broadway after a review like that.” The second time he said that to me over the phone, I said, “Roger, you give the critics the power. If you don’t want to do it, that’s one thing, but if you don’t want to do it because of a critic, then why bother producing anything? I can’t guarantee you a good review,” I said. “If you look at my history with the New York Times, this is nothing new. I can only do what I do and you’ve seen that. You’ve seen this extraordinary production and cast, and you’ve seen how the audience reacts. Trust your instincts and don’t give critics the power.” I felt like I was speaking for every actor who had ever been in a good show that closed because of one bad New York Times review.

  The producers truly loved Arthur’s production. Ultimately they had more confidence in what they had seen with their own eyes than they had in Mr. Brantley’s critique. Gypsy would be moving to the St. James Theatre on West Forty-fourth Street. Opening night was set for March 27, 2008. Previews began March 3.

  Rehearsals began February 4. The first day back, we had a meet-and-greet before we had a read-through around the table. We stood in a circle, said our names and what part we were playing—except Arthur, who just said, “Hello, everybody!” as Baby June. He was in great spirits. We read through the play, and by the end of the day Arthur was energized. It was great to see and a powerful lesson to us all.

  The cast that gathered around the table was virtually identical to the Encores! production. The only change was Lenora Nemetz, who took over the roles of Miss Cratchit and Mazeppa from Nancy Opel, who’d chosen to go out on the road with The Drowsy Chaperone. Lenora was a great addition. We’d been friends for thirty years, since we were both in Stephen Schwartz’s Working and Bill Finn’s America Kicks Up Its Heels, two bombs straight from hell.

  There was a gap of six months between the closing of the Encores! production and the beginning of rehearsals for Broadway. There’s something to be said for letting a role rest. When we resumed rehearsals, I was deeper into Rose—or she was deeper into me. It must have something to do with reflection and confidence.

  I still struggled with “Rose’s Turn.” Arthur and I spent a lot of intense time on it. We’d work on it for an hour before the company was called. In that hour I would do it six times at least. I knew what it was saying, but I didn’t understand the choreography. I didn’t understand the striptease in the middle of it. I thought if Rose was trying to prove she was equal to or better than Gypsy, then why wasn’t she doing June’s number? It was her creation. Granted, a striptease is sexier than a cartwheel, but Rose says to Gypsy in the penultimate scene, “You need something to remind you that your goal was to be a great actress, not a cheap stripper.” Why then does she imitate Gypsy’s strip in the song? She had just denigrated Gypsy. The “Rose’s Turn” lyrics and the choreography were contradicting each other, I thought. The song is a massive breakdown and reckoning. This end-of-play monumental actor’s turn was my monumental actor’s block.

  In rehearsal, Arthur was totally flexible in allowing me to take it out as far as I could in order to find my way back to the center and make it my own, to use my own understanding of this breakdown, this angry collapse and resurgence. Our choreographer, beloved Bonnie Walker, was the one who really allowed me to break free from the Robbins choreography. Bonnie and I were together for all three productions, from Ravinia to City Center to Broadway. She saw me struggle at Ravinia. She knew I would eventually get it, but she freed me by throwing out the dance steps that blocked me. She was so generous with me, for which I will always be grateful.

  When Arthur started directing me, he supplied insight into Rose’s thought process because he wrote it! Thank God for that information. Once it was established that the dance steps could be reinvented within the guidelines of the approved choreography, the number started to evolve and make sense to me. It took me as long as I played Rose to understand this great—and I mean great—theatrical moment in American musical history. I started to understand the strip … but understand it my way. It has to be said again: It’s almost impossible to “re-create” a role if it doesn’t come from one’s own gut and heart and brain.

  I was stuck in the telling of the story and telling the story is my primary responsibility. I have to start at the beginning: What is the playwright saying? What is the journey? Why is my character there? Once I have all that information, then generally the lines start to make sense and the character becomes apparent and I’m free. It’s a sticky feeling to be onstage confused, not knowing what you’re playing. Gypsy is so well written but it’s a very tricky play. With probing came the knowledge and with the knowledge came the freedom.

  Our freedom came straight from Arthur Laurents. He attacked his direction of this piece once he trusted us. I’ll never forget the day Arthur let me cut the reprise of “Small World” in the second-act dressing room scene. This was in the Encores! rehearsal period. He trusted me enough to know that my lack of understanding wasn’t just a dense actress (although I’ve been known to be that), but that something was getting in my way and impeding the story. I knew what it was but I couldn’t say what I was thinking. The playwright was in the room. He saw me continually stumble in the same spot.

  “Is the song getting in the way?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I told him. “I don’t know why it’s there.”

  “Do you want to cut it?”

  “Can we at least try it?”

  He said yes. Holy shit! I thought. I’m cutting the reprise. Arthur was allowing it to be cut because he, too, saw that it slowed down the impetus of the play. We were nearing the end of the story. Why were we breaking the action to sing a ballad? Sure enough, the minute it was cut, the scene flew seamlessly into the next scene and I got to the line “And you are going to be a star!” faster and with more urgency.

  So why was it there in the first place? Arthur explained that Ethel needed something to sing in the second act. That made sense, and it probably worked well for her, but to keep things alive in the theatre, especially a revival of an almost fifty-year-old musical, it has to be imbued with life. It can’t be revered to the point that it becomes a mausoleum.

  The casting of Boyd Gaines as Herbie was a kiss from the gods. Besides being a great actor, Boyd is a sage. A lot of our company was young. This company rarely missed a performance or took the notorious “personal day.” Every night on the stage all of the players were alive and performing at a hundred percent. Boyd said that Arthur gave everybody ownership of their roles, however large or small. Boyd is another Juilliard graduate, a generous human being, and a consummate gentleman. He is also an intelligent actor. Boyd was praised for portraying Herbie as a man, not just a cardboard backdrop for Rose. It’s all true and so much more. Boyd was a true acting partner. We worked together like a dream. In rehearsals, he also had some sort of sixth sense about what I was tryi
ng to ask for or explain. When I fumbled, got emotional, and couldn’t talk or couldn’t explain, I’d turn to him and he would succinctly put into words what I was trying to say. He did so effortlessly. He just knew my mind. He is the most diplomatic person I’ve ever encountered in this business. He was our leader onstage and off. I cannot wait for the next time I’m onstage with Boyd Gaines.

  And then there was Laura Benanti—Louise. I didn’t know Laura before this, but we became sisters and friends. Laura is beautiful, very funny, too smart for show business, and a talent to be reckoned with. Boyd, Laura, and I took the freedom that Arthur gave us, and then gave one another permission to be free with each other. That is a big and very brave step for actors: to give permission to be free, without fear. It’s a generosity that is rare.

  Celebrated Broadway director Jack O’Brien said to The Acting Company ensemble when he was rehearsing The Time of Your Life, “Fly, I’ll catch you.” It refers to danger and taking risks onstage. That’s what Boyd, Laura, and I were doing. I was flying, they were catching; they were flying, I was catching. The farther I had to reach for them, the more fun I had. Freedom and danger onstage—there’s nothing better. Why act otherwise?

  That’s what we had, and that’s what helped create what was undoubtedly the happiest company I’ve ever been a part of. I’ve never seen a crew and a cast comingle and care for one another the way this company and crew did. There was just a lot of love, and a lot of fun backstage. You saw people laughing with one another before they went on. And it was not out of disrespect; it was out of this wonderful working environment. It’s so rare to see that kind of thing happen. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. And the Sunday brunches, headed by Robert Guy, that our wardrobe department would lay on! It was a Sunday gathering at the altar of food for the last show of the week. Everybody brought something in and we ate like piglets, socialized, and wished one another a good show and good day off. Those little Broadway traditions—Sunday brunches, notes passed back and forth from theatre to theatre, the dimming of the Broadway lights when a colleague has died, the theatre ghosts, the Gypsy robe, the Broadway softball league—I love Broadway.

  At one point during the Broadway rehearsal period, Lenora Nemetz grabbed Arthur and me and took us to another floor at the New 42nd Street Studios. The three of us walked into a rehearsal room where two actors were working, but these weren’t just any two actors: Chita Rivera and George Hearn were rehearsing The Visit in preparation for an opening in D.C. in May.

  Everyone in the room was happily connected to everyone else via theatre experiences and bonds of affection that stretched over decades. George, of course, was my beloved first Sweeney and my Frederik in A Little Night Music at Ravinia. When Arthur directed La Cage aux Folles, George portrayed Albin. Chita Rivera was Arthur’s original Anita in West Side Story. Lenora was Chita’s cover in the original production of Chicago. It was a heartfelt reunion filled with genuine affection, camaraderie, and Broadway history.

  Rehearsal flew by, and as the technical week was approaching, we ran the show for the St. James Theatre department heads. After Tony Yazbeck, who played Tulsa, did “All I Need Is the Girl,” Arthur said to me, “Now I know why I cry every time I watch this number. Jerry Robbins didn’t much like the song and delayed in choreographing it. I made Jerry work on it one day, so he and I rehearsed it on the roof of the New Amsterdam. Jerry made me play Louise. It was the first time in my life that I danced. It took me forty years to realize why I cry every time I see it. I don’t dance and Jerry made me dance. To me, it’s the greatest dance number choreographed in the musical theatre.”

  We moved into the St. James, where the production fit like a jewel on the stage. The St. James is a blessed little place, supposedly haunted with its own ghost. The St. James is also where Arthur directed Tyne Daly in Gypsy—a very good omen.

  We were well into previews when Arthur said out loud what must never be said inside a theatre: He uttered the actual title of the Shakespearean tragedy we call “the Scottish Play.”

  Theatre people are notoriously superstitious, and saying the name Macbeth backstage or in a dressing room is the biggest, darkest superstition of them all. It’s taken seriously with good reason. Actors can tell tales of accidents and close calls after someone uttered the word. Soon it began happening to us, too. Things started to go wrong. The curtains got snarled in the “Rose” light at the end of “Rose’s Turn.” Sami Gayle, our Baby June, fractured her pelvis warming up and missed the Broadway opening. This was serious stuff, and something had to be done before there were any more mishaps. Lenora pulled me aside and was adamant that Arthur break the curse. She had a deep look of concern on her face, as if she’d be next in the line of injuries.

  The ritual to break the curse of the Scottish Play is very specific, and more than a little peculiar. In accordance with the time-honored procedure, I made Arthur go outside onto West Forty-fourth Street, only because that’s where I found him backstage—right next to the door. It was almost thirty minutes before we were due to go on. He was baffled at my insistence that he go through this ritual. He was outside on the street and I told him through the closed door to turn around counterclockwise three times, spit over his left shoulder, curse, then knock on the door and ask to come back in. Well, we heard him swear like a drunken sailor, even though there was a line of ticket holders standing next to the door, intrigued or horrified by the sight of Arthur Laurents spinning, spitting, and swearing. But it had the desired effect, and the spell was broken.

  We never did see the blue lady in the mezzanine—the ghost of the St. James, that is. It may be one of Broadway’s most haunted houses, but it’s now my favorite theatre.

  One night after the show, Bernie Gersten and his wife, Cora Cahan, took Stephen Daldry and me to Orso for supper. As he was leaving, Joel Schumacher came to our table and complimented me. He’d seen the show that night. He then told us a story about the making of the movie Phantom of the Opera. According to Joel, at one point during the casting process Andrew Lloyd Webber suggested that I should play Carlotta.

  “But Andrew,” Joel explained patiently, “she doesn’t talk to you.”

  “Oh yes,” Andrew replied. “There is that.”

  We opened the show again to near-hysterical audiences. I got through it as best I could, just really grateful that we were now open and hoping we’d settle into a run. All my dearest friends who always show up on my openings were there. I love them for putting up with the utter chaos of openings and the after-party, which I abhor.

  Ben Brantley’s review for Gypsy at the St. James was as much of a rave as one could ask for:

  Watch out, New York. Patti LuPone has found her focus. And when Ms. LuPone is truly focused, she’s a laser, she incinerates. Especially when she’s playing someone as dangerously obsessed as Mama Rose in the wallop-packing revival of the musical Gypsy, which opened Thursday night at the St. James Theater.… And yes, that quiet crunching sound you hear is me eating my hat….

  When Ms. LuPone delivers “Rose’s Turn,” she’s building a bridge for an audience to walk right into one woman’s nervous breakdown. There is no separation at all between song and character, which is what happens in those uncommon moments when musicals reach upward to achieve their ideal reasons to be.

  Once in a while you get a review worth reading yourself.

  Scott Wittman told me to send Mr. Brantley a hat after the review came out. It was a chocolate cowboy hat in a very pretty hatbox. I wanted to eat it myself and keep the hatbox.

  With our great reviews, ticket sales skyrocketed. We played this great musical joyously.

  When the Tony nominations were announced in May, I was not surprised to be nominated, but I was afraid to hope for anything more. I’d been disappointed twice before. Everyone had told me I was “a cinch” as Reno Sweeney, and “a lock” for Mrs. Lovett. Well, this turned out to be my year, and on June 17, 2008, David Hyde Pierce opened the envelope and read my name.

  During
the weeks leading up to this moment, Pat White and I had started writing acceptance speeches for a laugh. They were pretty funny, but it was Jeff Richman who wrote the first line: “It’s such a wonderful gift to be an actor who makes her living working on the Broadway stage—and then every thirty years or so, pick up one of these!”

  The long time between speeches left me with three decades of people to thank, and very little time to do it. Toward the end of what they thought should have been my allotted time onstage, the orchestra started to play me off.

  I couldn’t stop where the director of the TV show wanted me to stop. I still had very important people to acknowledge, including Boyd and Laura, both of whom also won Tonys that night, and the real Rose Hovick, without whom none of this would have happened. I did forget to thank my terrific musical director, Patrick Vaccariello, so I’ll thank him here. It could be another twenty-eight years before I stand on that stage again, and I’ll be drooling by then.

  Playing Rose eight times a week demanded stamina, both physical and emotional. I could handle the singing, but it was emotionally draining and physically exhausting. If I wasn’t running, I was singing; if I wasn’t singing, I was shouting. I was expected to deliver this role, and if truth be told, I was already at least fifteen years too old for it. It took every ounce of energy and strength this little Sicilian engine could muster … and then some.

  But this was the time I was given to play it. I knew I wouldn’t fail in the delivery of it, but I was worried about failing in the physicality of it.

  I didn’t want to admit the frailty, but about six months into the run, I hit the wall. I went to a nutritionist, Oz Garcia, to sort out my health, because I didn’t think I was going to make it. Oz changed my eating habits and put me on a lot of supplements. I don’t know what I would’ve done if the choreographer, Gillian Lynne, hadn’t sent me to Oz. My body energy changed radically and I ended the run physically stronger than when I started it.