INTERVIEW A.D. AMOROSI
N Patti Lupone
AMED AFTER A 1940 COLE Porter song, and as dedicated to the sounds of the Great White Way and Tin Pan Alley, past and present, as it is her youth in Long Island, Patti Lupone’s “Don’t Monkey with Broadway” could be yet another of her Tony Award-winning musicals, tense dramas, or yarn-ripping comedies. Each song that Lupone executes has more nuanced theatrical arcs than A Doll’s House and A Doll’s House II, combined, and twice the emotion. This concert-setting soliloquy—nestled at the Kimmel Center on June 9—is all talking, all singing and all Lupone kicking ass on songs from composers such as Jule Styne, Stephen Schwartz, and Stephen Sondheim, productions such as Evita, Gypsy, Sweet Charity, and Oklahoma! And, as opinionated as Lupone is, she’s taking numbers (surely, she’ll rip on Trump as she did in this interview). I caught up to her on the morning of the Obie Awards in Manhattan, making tea and prepping her laundry.
Broadway, Her Way With her “Don’t Monkey with Broadway” showcase at the Kimmel Center, the Tony Award-winning singer and actress sings her life story. And at a reasonable volume.
As a youth on the stage you worked with who you could get and did what you could. As an award-winning star, you all but have your choice of collaborators and music. As a legend, you can do absolutely anything you damn well please, experiment, craft your own concerts. What do you look for within the adventure of music—songs and collaborators? If it’s a musical, I just look for really great directors. That’s the only reason I did [Sondheim’s] Company in London—because I wanted to work with Marianne Elliott. I’m actually not that kind of person, though. I don’t look for things, because I never get them. If I audition, I don’t get the part. So I sort of let the universe bring things into my sphere. That’s how I operate now. It’s too depressing to lose a role, or not get a role. What comes my way is what I’m supposed to be doing. Would you say that once something does come your way, it’s instinct that becomes your guide as to how you’ll tackle it, or is there something else? Oh, instinct. Is the same thing true when you’re handling songs—rather than entire staged and choreographed musicals—the likes of which fill “Don’t Monkey with Broadway”? It’s stuff that I—and I alone—want. “Don’t Monkey with Broadway” is stuff
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