Patti LuPone - a podcast by Adriaan Fuchs

A trained actor (with a Juilliard pedigree), LuPone was catapulted to overnight stardom when she thrust her arms skyward in the original 1979 Broadway production of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s “Evita”. By her own account her experience of “Evita” was not enjoyable, and she had tremendous difficulty in mastering the vocal demands of the role. Even so, she managed to rip through the score like a hurricane unleashed (winning a Drama Desk Award, and her first Tony), and to this day, her portrayal of Eva Peron is generally considered to be definitive.



Following “Evita”, LuPone originated the role of Fantine in “Les Misérables”, and in the process become the first American to win a Laurence Olivier Award. She wowed audiences with her brassy pipes, tap-dancing sass, and deft comic skills in the role of Reno Sweeney in Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes”, and then originated the role of Norma Desmond in the original West End production of “Sunset Boulevard”. That experience, however, would lead to one of the greatest disappointments in LuPone’s career, when Andrew Lloyd Webber decided to cast Glenn Close, not LuPone, as Norma Desmond on Broadway, despite a signed contract that promised the role to LuPone.



She shed any preconceptions about the role of Mrs. Lovett in Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd” with a refreshing interpretation in John Doyle’s 2005 Broadway production. And in 2008, won her second Tony for her indelible performance as Momma Rose in the Jule Styne-Stephen Sondheim-Arthur Laurents musical “Gypsy”.



There is perhaps no more a fitting word than “glorious” to describe LuPone’s trademark full-throtlle singing style with its joyful blare and leering swoops. Part of the thrill of listening to her or seeing her perform, is the obvious joy she takes in her own voice and what she manages to accomplish with her incredible God-given talent. She takes risks, she pushes her chest voice higher than most singers dare to go. She’s known for her incredible vocal stamina, for having what many have referred to as “vocal chords of steel.” “LuPone has a miracle of a voice”, noted People Magazine. “It can be as big and bold as a brass band or as plaintive as a solitary woodwind.” But, no matter whether she is belting out high E’s, F’s and G’s in “Evita”, or has the audience in the palm of her hand crooning a torch song in an intimate cabaret venue, LuPone’ s style is, as Adam Feldman noted, “stamped with an implicit credo: all guts, all glory.”



In this, the final episode of Great Interpreters Goes Broadway!, Adriaan Fuchs profiles the career, the voice, the artistry of the one and only, Patti LuPone.

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