Patti LuPone’s great love affair with Australia
Broadway star Patti LuPone is as enamoured with Australia as local theatre-lovers are with her. And, particularly with the state of her native America at the moment, she couldn’t be happier to escape for a while to her “favourite country”.
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Broadway star Patti LuPone is as enamoured with Australia as local theatre-lovers are with her. And, particularly with the state of her native America at the moment, she couldn’t be happier to escape for a while to her “favourite country”.
The three-time Tony Award-winner will headline the Adelaide Cabaret Festival in June, before a national tour stopping in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to show off her new concert “A Life in Notes”, straight from the bright lights of Carnegie Hall.
“Every single time somebody says do you want to go to Australia, the answer is a resounding yes,” the 75-year-old says from her Connecticut home.
“I am very excited to come back. I love Australia – it’s my favourite country.”
Dubbed one of the most celebrated voices in theatre history, her credits include her Tony Award-winning work in Evita, Gypsy and Company, as well as on screen, appearing in Frasier, 30 Rock, American Horror Story and the upcoming Marvel series Agatha: Darkhold Diaries.
A Life In Notes – her own musical memoir about growing up in America – marks LuPone’s third concert tour in Australia and follows her triumphant debut here in 1981 as Eva Peron in Evita, after performing the iconic character on Broadway to “terrible” reviews.
Bringing the show Down Under is when she first fell in love with all things Aussie – and five years since her last visit, if you ask her, is five years too long.
“For Evita, the pressure was off,” the refreshingly candid stage and screen icon says of her introduction to local audiences 43 years ago.
“There was so much hype around it before I was cast, and then there was so much hype on why should I be cast … and then it was the most difficult role, and my reviews were terrible in America – but I won the Tony.
“And then I left Evita – I had lost my sense of humour – and then I got a telephone call to come to Australia … and I thought, well, I’m never going to be asked to go to Australia again, so yes, I’ll go.
“And then when I came to Australia, all the pressure was off me because I’d already proven myself in New York, and I was just able to have a blast in Australia, with that company, living in Potts Point – or maybe Point Piper – I can’t remember,” she laughs.
“But I had the most beautiful view of the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge and it was a spectacular company.
“And then afterwards, I took a month and travelled throughout Australia, and I just had the most incredible time.
“Every single time we’ve gone down there, I don’t go down there just to perform – I go down there to see the country and then perform.”
And she’s seen a lot of it – more than a lot of Aussies have, actually. She’s yet to do the west coast, but has been as far north as Lizard Island in Far North Queensland, as far south as Tasmania and has driven from Alice to Darwin, all over Ross River, Katherine, Mataranka – and she can’t wait to see even more this time.
Her new show represents this life well lived, and showcases her talent through the music that has shaped her, as all the best music does.
That’s one of the reasons Michael Casselwas desperate to bring her back.
“There are bucket-list artists who I have dreamt of working with, and Patti LuPone has definitely been one of them,” the producer explains.
“She is one of the most extraordinary performers in the world and it is an honour to bring her to Australia and share that power that she has become so famous for with audiences here.”
Adelaide Cabaret Festival artistic director Virginia Gay agrees.
“Patti LuPone is an icon, a titan of the industry,” she says.
“And the voice, my friends, the voice. Immediately identifiable, totally unmistakeable, iconically her – an artistic calling card of spectacular weight and beauty.
“This is an extraordinary opportunity for Australia to see a living legend at the top of her game … right here, on your doorstep.”
While LuPone is flattered by the compliments, she says being called a legend shows her age – which, in a way, is the whole point of her show.
“When I started to be called a legend, I said to my husband, ‘Well, I’m old now.’ But it’s true,” she laughs.
“I think success is longevity.
“And I want to work. I want to continue to do what I do. And I’m still doing it, so I’m lucky that I can.
“I’m lucky that I’m still hireable and hopefully this time when I do these concerts, people will see who I am.
“You don’t necessarily see who I am when I’m playing a character – but all of these shows are who I am as a person.”
The show is brand new, and in a Taylor Swift Eras Tour kind of way, takes fans on a musical journey spanning LuPone’s extraordinary life, decade by decade.
“It is the touchstone – as we’re growing up, you hear a song, and you remember exactly where you were, how old you were, who you were with, and the impact the song had on you the very first time you heard it,” she says.
“So growing up in America, this is the music that affected me.
“So there is a Broadway section because I ended up on the Broadway musical stage.
“But it also evokes different decades of my life in America.
“The ’80s were crazy in New York City, and I’m a child of the ’50s and ’60s – so rock and roll and my generation grew up together.
“So it’s music that I recall, that I remember, that I love – it’s not necessarily Broadway stuff.
“It’s the stuff that spoke to my life.”
So then, does she have a favourite era? Not a chance.
“I don’t have a favourite anything, because it’s so limiting,” she says.
“I would then tend to go in that direction because it was my favourite, and not be able to explore other things.
“I mean, if I say the notes that informed my life as I grew into my love life, these were mine. Cultural things affect us, political things affect us – how we grow up, what is the environment in which we are growing up? And what are the external forces that affect us.
“Music is powerful.
“I’m sure music is in everyone’s life, whether they realise it or not.”
LuPone was lucky enough to have a music education over her formative schooling years – something that has since been cut from the curriculum in many American public schools.
It’s one of the many reasons she’s preparing to leave – a move that will be swiftly put in motion if a certain controversial former US president gets re-elected.
“We would march into our third grade at Ocean Avenue Elementary School, and there were two posters – one of orchestra instruments and one of band instruments, and we were told to choose instruments,” she recalls.
“And we started to play that instrument when we were eight years old.
“We started to learn how to read music when we were eight years old, and those music classes continued through high school.
“And they’ve been cut from American school systems, which is insane.
“It’s our culture, and it’s also a human right.
“So I was fortunate. I was surrounded by music, and I was surrounded by excellent teachers that turned me on at a very young age to classical music.
“The choruses that I was in, the things that I was exposed to, the trips we took to the Metropolitan Opera House – it doesn’t happen anymore in America, and it’s sad, it’s very sad.”
In the Carnegie Hall incarnation of A Life In Notes, LuPone’s director Scott Wittman wanted to have kids sing Forever Young with her, so they went to the Young People’s Chorus, which has been in the five boroughs of New York for the past 40 years.
“I was blown away by these kids,” she says.
“I could cry right now thinking about it.
“There were about 700 kids of all ages, singing very complicated stuff.
“And the first thing I thought was, ‘Thank God they’re being taught.’ They could read music – and I thought, ‘Oh, my God – it’s not dead.’
“And then, I thought, New York is a tough place … a brutal place, but it has a heart – you just have to find it.”
She says it’s a frightening time in America, for “those of us that are on one side of it”.
“My husband and I are preparing to leave if we have to – and if Donald Trump gets re-elected, then we will leave,” she says.
“I keep saying what are we going to do?
“We have a home in Connecticut, but what we’re going to do is what we should have done when we were teenagers – get a Westfalia van and some sleeping bags and see Europe. I am taking stock of who I know in Europe and in the British Isles and in Ireland.
“Because it’s frightening. It’s a very, very scary time in this country.
“But it’s not just in this country – I don’t know what’s going on, but fascism is on the rise.
“I just never imagined that at my age I would be dealing with this – these are not times that one wants to relax and retire in – these are treacherous times.”
The topic of retirement is not one she considers lightly.
“That’s the big $64,000 question,” she admits.
“Because I don’t know what to do if I don’t do this. And I’ve already experienced times of unemployment, and I don’t know how to fill the time because this is what I’ve done all my life.
“(Actor) Peter Weller is a friend and I ran into him years ago when I was unemployed, and he told me what he did in his downtime as an actor – he went and got his art history degree at Syracuse University in New York State.
“He’s now a professor of art history at UCLA in California.
“I wished I had that kind of energy – I’d rather take to my bed,” she laughs.
But in all seriousness – who is LuPone without music?
“I have been trying to figure out what to do – because what if all of a sudden I do have to stop?” she says.
“Because I don’t have anything, I can’t think of anything. I don’t knit. I’m not a gardener.
“Yes, I read and I cook – but how do you fill up the day? How do you happily fill up a day in retirement?
“I don’t know – because all I’ve done is this.”
She’s been married to Matthew Johnston for close to 40 years and the pair have a 33-year-old son, Joshua, who lives in LA.
He’s not musical like her, but is an actor and writer.
“He’s trying to make a go of it, but it’s tough,” she says.
“It’s much harder now because there are so many more people who want to be in show business.
“And when I see people on stage, I’m just gobsmacked at how good they are, and they are triple, quadruple threats.
“When I’m not working, I’m home in my house and I keep busy knowing that eventually I’m gonna go back to work and do something else – but I’m a housewife, I do laundry, I’m just a regular person in my house.
“I love to drive around the area – I do what anybody else does.”
Until the time comes, whenever that may be, LuPone will sing until she can sing no more.
“I love what I do … I can communicate with an audience. That’s what I’m supposed to do,” she says.
“And if I am communicating with an audience, if we’re having an experience together, that brings me the most joy.
“I’m just a regular person who was blessed with talent.
“I’m just excited to be there in Australia – I can’t wait.” ■
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