Patti LuPone always ready to take on a musical challenge
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Patti LuPone. -
Patti LuPone offers an impassioned rendition of "The Ladies Who Lunch" in "Company," performed earlier this year with the New York Philharmonic.
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In case you're looking to cast a new musical that would benefit from one of theater's iconic voices, Patti LuPone wants you to know that she's open to original work.
The Tony Award winner for "Evita" and "Gypsy" did get to do "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" last year, a two-months-and-out Broadway show that earned her a seventh Tony nomination. But she's back again in familiar territory next week, starting a nine-week stint of "An Evening With Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin."
She'll tune up with another concert show, her one-woman "Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda" with music director Rob Foster and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
"This one I love because it's the songs that I coulda sung, I woulda sung if someone had cast me, I shoulda sung because I would have been better in the part."
Where: Heinz Hall, Downtown.
When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday; 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 2:30 p.m. Sunday.
Tickets: $20-$95; pittsburghsymphony.org or 412-392-4900.
Ms. LuPone was laughing as she said that on Monday, the day electricity was restored to her Connecticut home. She was among the thousands of Northeasterners affected for more than a week by the violent snowstorm of Oct. 30.
"The destruction was unbelievable," she said. "It looked like God took a fist [to the neighborhood] because it was unnatural. Entire, gigantic trees uprooted ... it's really, really sad to see the destruction."
Things are falling back into place just in time for her to leave for Pittsburgh and Heinz Hall, where she'll be Thursday through Sunday, a makeup gig for a June date that was postponed when "Women on the Verge" made the leap to Broadway.
"I think it needed a little more time, but I loved that experience; I think they did such an interesting job," she said of converting Pedro Almodovar's movie into a musical theater piece. "I was so glad to have been a part of it and work with Bartlett [Sher] and David [Yazbek] and Jeffrey [Lane] and Pedro. ... I'm not asked to do original musicals, so I was more than happy to. I wish I was involved with more original material."
First Published November 9, 2011 12:00 am
