GYPSY WITH PATTI LUPONE

Hum-ma-na hum-ma-na Billy!

"Patti Lupone" in Forbidden Broadway

When I was younger, and my voice was more forgiving, I could do a passable impression of Ethel Merman. (Big surprise – all queens can do one of 3 impressions: Merman, Carol Channing or Bette Davis.  Most can do all three. I can almost do late period Katherine Hepburn.) Though La Merm was decidedly not much of an artist, she certainly had one helluva voice.  And she never sounded as glorious as she did in Gypsy. Gypsy is one of my absolute favourites musicals. (I would sit though a production with Rosanne Barr and Pauly Shore - I like it that much.)  Countless women of a certain age since have essayed the role of a lifetime that is Mama Rose - from Joanne Worley and Linda Lavin to Bette Midler and Rosalind Russell, Tyne Daly and Bernadette Peters to Angela Lansbury. But none, I believe, so completely and so successfully as Patti Lupone.

Patti Lupone is not an actor one would describe as delicate. On a guest shot on Frasier, she portrayed a Greek cousin-in-law of the Cranes in a manner so over-the-top, that I spent the entire episode worried that she was going to pop out of the TV screen and smash a plate of spanikopita over my head.  I don’t think I would ever want to see her in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire. Well, maybe as Stanley.  Or the streetcar.

I first saw Patti live in 1996 when she was playing Maria Callas in Master Class. It was a superlative performance in a mediocre play. I hadn’t been too hot on her previously, my only experience of her having been a performance of Being Alive on the Sondheim at Carnegie Hall video.  I found her voice alternately strident and woofy, and her diction alternately overdone and mushy.  She did have great high notes though.  After Evita, she developed a hole in the middle of her voice, and often seemed to have trouble navigating quieter passages.  But she had nodes removed, and took some time off to retrain and has came back sounding better than ever (presumably having also sold her soul to Satan – there is no other explanation for her singing so well). She uses a chest mix for some of the higher passages now, instead of just blasting through. (Mind you, some of the most exciting singing I have ever heard was Patti’s park and bark. See the video of "Rainbow High" from her final night in Evita. Awesome!)  So when I heard she was bringing her Ravinia-and-Lincoln-Center-tested Mama Rose to Broadway, under the direction of Arthur Laurents no less, I was prepared be dazzled.  I was. So much so, that I saw it twice.

I cannot rave about this show enough.  It was definitely directed as a star vehicle for Patti, and she was indeed dazzling.  There wasn’t a piece of scenery left unchewed. She belted, she ranted, she danced, she seduced, she cried, she laughed, she screamed, she has a nervous breakdown for the ages. And yet, there was so much subtlety (yes, subtlety…) to her portrayal. It was performance for the ages, a role she was born to play. There wasn’t a false note. Despite all the histrionics she can (and has) (and does) indulge in, this was a performance of absolute truth. There were so many heartbreaking moments, made all the more powerful by the tremendous emotional and technical framework she built. And if that weren’t enough, Boyd Gaines and Laura Benanti, as Herbie and Louise respectively, matched Patti note for note in beautifully nuanced performances that crackled with energy. And the strippers at the end almost succeed in stealing the show (which they often do). The last 20 minutes of the show were absolutely devastating. I was sobbing at the end of Rose’s Turn, and found myself unable to clap. There were a few, hmmm…. not quite mistakes… let’s say, miscalculations, in the show.  Dainty June delivered a one-note performance, and that note is flat. Her big scene was awful. Truly. And Laurents inserted a couple of unnecessary cheesy bits that get a laugh, but they’re cheap laughs (although my idol, Phyllis Diller, once said there’s no such thing as a cheap laugh). But why quibble? It was perhaps the most satisfying night of theatre I have ever experienced.

This is Rose's Turn form the Broadway production

This is from the 1981 Tony Awards. Listen to around the 4 minute mark for a full voiced belted high G!

This is Rainbow HIgh from her final performance as Evita on Broadway. Park-and-bark at it's finest.