PATTI LuPONE
Although a Patti LuPone performance and a passionate audience seem to go hand in hand, the two-time Tony Award winner admits she didn't realize her recent, final performance in the acclaimed, Tony-nominated revival of Gypsy "would be as wildly enthusiastic as it was."

"Basically," a good-humored, candid LuPone explained earlier this week, "I was like a lion tamer trying to control the audience. I felt that once we got onstage, it was about making sure we didn't lose control of the play and that we had to play it as if it was a Tuesday night in the middle of the run as opposed to a Sunday matinee on the closing of a successful production. We had been extremely well-rehearsed by Arthur [Laurents] and loved by Arthur. As a result, all of that love goes into the piece and becomes respect and ownership of the piece, so we were able to hold onto the production of the play, [although] it was pretty difficult. But it was unbelievable."

LuPone says the entire Gypsy experience — arguably her most successful performance to date, one that won the actress a Tony Award, a Drama Desk Award, an Outer Critics Circle Award and the Drama League's Distinguished Performance Award — was a magical one "because of this company and the crew and the orchestra and the ushers. Everybody in the building liked each other! I've never seen a crew and a company interact and hang out with each other. I've never seen ushers more vigilant. And, I've never seen a company more harmonious. We also had great kids. We had unbelievable children in this show. Even the ones that were replacements were as nice and as disciplined and as loving as the kids that they replaced."

Although ending the award-winning experience was "heart-wrenching," LuPone says playing the role of Rose, the stage mother of all stage mothers whose children became actress June Havoc and the late stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, was extremely demanding. "[Co-star] Boyd [Gaines] and I would come offstage in the middle of the Grantziger scene and just look at each other and say, 'I'm going to die.' We thought if we actually ran through March, as we were supposed to, we would have had to take a vacation, and neither one of us wanted to take a vacation. We loved our understudies, but we didn't want to play with our understudies. It's almost harder to play with [someone's] understudy because you don't know what they're going to do, and they don't really know what you're doing because they've been rehearsing with the understudy. Boyd and I, being among the senior members of the company, were gasping like a fish out of water," LuPone laughs.

	Patti LuPone in Gypsy
	photo by Joan Marcus

It was another camera going off, however, that seemed to capture the attention of bloggers and newspaper and entertainment writers nationwide. On the day preceding the closing, LuPone now-famously stopped the show during "Rose's Turn" to admonish an audience member who, despite a notice in the program and announcements made over the theatre's loudspeaker, took photos of LuPone during her performance of that Stephen Sondheim-Jule Styne classic. "That [reaction]," LuPone explains, "was a year-long, lifelong battle with people that have total disregard for their fellow audience members. . . . [and] I don't want to diminish the effect that it could have on the actor onstage, whoever [the actor may be]."

LuPone says another camera-related incident that stands out in her mind occurred three decades ago when she and Mandy Patinkin were co-starring in the original Broadway production of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's Evita. "They were flash cameras [then]; they weren't digital. That's one of the reasons why I believe [taking pictures] became illegal. Not only is it my image — you are not allowed to take my image from me without my permission — that's number one. But number two, it was very dangerous when there were flash bulbs going off. I remember Mandy, in Evita, going down the stage. A guy with a big old camera [was sitting in the front row], and Mandy went, 'C'mon, take my picture! C'mon, take my picture!' During the show! The thing it does is it breaks the theatrical moment. It breaks the theatricality of the [moment] for everybody, for the audience especially. And how can you have a theatrical experience if you are trying to chronicle it?

"So my objections are, 'Don't take my image without my permission.' This is theatre. It is being performed for the audience, for them, in the moment. That needs to be respected. And it is illegal. It used to be for the danger — I think that's pretty much why all of it started. But it is also our image, and it is an illegal control of our image."

LuPone says she is also bothered by theatregoers who place their programs on the edge of the stage. "It's as if you've bought a seat and an end table," she laughs. "Oh, my gosh, I've kicked them off the stage! I've kicked them off at Sweeney, I've kicked them off at Gypsy, I kicked them off for Master Class. They think, because they're in the first row, they can put their programs down on the lip of the stage. They're not thinking of the people that are in the mezzanine and the people that are in the balcony. How can you have a theatrical experience when you're looking at a Playbill, lit up, on the stage?"

And, of course, texting and cell phones remain a problem for all attending the theatre. "I remember some woman actually answered the phone [during the performance] and said [loudly], 'What? What are you talking about?' She got up and continued her conversation as she went out of the row and then up the aisle and out the door," LuPone says with disbelief. "The thing that helped — because we had many, many, many less phone calls during Gypsy than I experienced before — there was a pretty long message at the top of the show. And I think there was enormous respect for the production. I think people have sort of cottoned to who I am at this point, and they know I'm not going to tolerate it. And it's not about — okay, I'll say it's also about me, [but] it's about the audience. It pisses me off if I'm in an audience and I hear a phone going off. . . . That is what is lacking: public manners and that respect for the person sitting to your right, to your left, in front and behind you. That should be an experience that is shared communally with respect for your neighbors."

	Arthur Laurents and Patti LuPone
	photo by Aubrey Reuben

Among "the neighbors" at the final performance of Gypsy were two of its creators, librettist Laurents, who directed the production to Tony-nominated effect, and lyricist Stephen Sondheim. "It was historic [to have them in attendance]," LuPone says. "As you do, you wonder whether all productions will be remembered… Any production you've been a part of, you wonder, 'Will this one go down? Will this one be remembered?' Will the Evita, the production with Mandy, be remembered? You can't help but think, 'Was the work good enough that it is going to be remembered?' It's a natural reaction in theatre. . . . And you really don't have anything to compare it to except for people's word of mouth, from memory. So the fact that there's documentation, that there are pictures of Arthur and me [and Sondheim] onstage at the end of the show. We all know that that will never happen again. I mean they'll be onstage together for West Side Story, but for Gypsy that won't happen again."

When asked whether she misses the Broadway schedule, LuPone explains, "You lose the discipline, and that's the thing I've been fighting. I'm a sloth. I'm never ready for show business when it happens. I've said that all my life. All of a sudden I've got a job and I've gained 20 pounds and I'm like, 'Oh, *&**! I'm not ready for show business.' You lose the discipline of eight shows a week, and that's one of the things I love about a long run, the discipline of it. You know where you're going to be at eight o'clock. Everything revolves around that schedule. So everything I need to do is geared around eight o'clock. If I have to work out, if I have to take a singing lesson, if I have to go to the doctor, if I have to get a massage — all of that stuff is geared around an eight o'clock show. It's a rigid schedule. I love that. And right now, quite frankly, I'm still that disciplined. After all of these years, I have finally learned not to let it go. I'm going back on the road with Mandy, so I knew I wouldn't let it go, but I still have the ability to not get out of bed and just gain 20 pounds after a show closes!"

	Mandy Patinkin with Patti LuPone in Evita
	photo by Van Williams

LuPone and Patinkin will begin their tour of An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin March 7 at the Staller Center for the Arts in Stony Brook, NY. The two-act concert will then play venues in Delaware, Florida, New Jersey, Missouri, Michigan, Arizona, Kentucky, Ohio, Wisconsin, California and more within the next few months. About the genesis of An Evening, LuPone says, "There was a booker in Richardson, Texas — they were opening a brand-new performing arts center — who called my agent at ICM Artists and said, 'I got Mandy, how about Patti?' and then called Mandy's agent and said, 'I have Patti, how about Mandy?' And he put us together after 25 years. So I got a call from Mandy, who said, 'I don't want to just do, You sing a song and I sing a song, and then we do a duet.' I was doing Noises Off at the time, and I said, 'Mandy I can't partake in the development of this.' He said, 'I'll do it. I want to do it.' I said, 'Great, do it.' And we did it, and then we didn't do it for five years. And then all of a sudden it happened again. I guess the idea of Mandy and me being onstage together again is generating enough excitement that we're getting booked all over the place."

The concert, which was conceived by Patinkin and musical director-pianist Paul Ford, also features direction by Patinkin and choreography by Ann Reinking. LuPone says she loves working with Patinkin: "Mandy was my ballast in Evita. Mandy kept me together. I went through a really, really, really rough time in Evita, and Mandy was my support, my shoulder, my hug, my ballast. I adore him, and so I adore working with him onstage. He's dangerous onstage, and I love the fact that he's dangerous, and yet we're safe in each other's arms." Continued...