I was lucky to attend Deconstructing Patti tonight and it was a TRIP so I am writing this entire fucking research paper so all you guys can live vicariously through me.
-First thing, because I know this is what y’all came to hear: BI COMPANY! It sucks that Joanne won’t be a lesbian, but Patti says there is at least one gay pairing with the other suitors. Joanne will have a much, much younger husband. Either they haven’t finished re-writing or Patti just doesn’t have a script yet because that’s all she knows. They start rehearsing August 6th of 2018.
Also to keep you on your seats, RAUL ESPARZA SHOWS UP, CHRISTINE EBERSOLE SHOWS UP, HOWARD MCGILLIN, MORE
-Patti pre-recorded the “no taping, no cellphones message” with a wonderful snarl on cellphones then says, “but disregard that entirely, have a ball tonight” but I still didn’t see A SINGLE CELL PHONE the entire time. No one was willing to risk that shit, even with express permission from Patti herself.
-She looks fucking amazing. I’ve only ever seen her in costume on stage before. She had on a short little sparkly blue dress with long sleeves. Her hair looked fantastic. Incredibly hard to believe she’s 68. She starts with Some People and the vibrato is A+++
- PATTI NEEDS A HIP REPLACEMENT. So it turns out this is the big reason she was not planning on doing musicals after War Paint. She had sort of hinted at injuries and age, but it’s actually quite severe. She really could not walk well tonight and it was kinda heartbreaking because she looks and acts so youthful. She had a painful looking limp. At the same time, she refused to change out of her very high heels. She had brought out flats just in case and Seth encouraged her to change, but she would rather limp fabulously. Incredible.
- She picked up Company because of Marianne Elliott. She wants to work with female directors. Late career Patti is a hardcore feminist.
-Christine comes out for “Face to Face”. She looks gorgeous. Scott Frankel comes out to play piano very impressively.
Christine: “How much do we love Patti?” Lots of Applause.
Patti: “How much do we love Christine?” Lots of Applause.
Patti, semi-jokingly, looking at Christine, in low, sultry voice: “How much do we love each other?” Me: dies. Fucking fan service, Patti LuPone.
Christine talks about how one of Patti’s massive Helena necklaces fell apart during the final scene of War Paint a few days ago. At first, it just dropped to the ground. Patti tried to stuff it in her purse but it didn’t fit. She’s struggling with it so she leaves it on the table. It’s like a triple strand of pearls and they are falling everywhere intermittently, like punctuation to every line. Plunk…plunk……plunk plunk plunk. It’s a total mess and the stage is covered in pearls. Christine gets to the line where she guesses what’s in Helena’s lipstick, beeswax, etc…and freshwater pearl for shine and the audience dies.
When Helena is “writing” in War Paint, Patti actually writes a diary about the audience and stuff. She’s got a huge stack of pages from the beginning of the run. A few paraphrased excerpts:
My personal favorite: “Han… what does this say? Hangover Tuesday. Oh..”
“Tina Fey in audience today, we’re saved” sarcasm hahaha
“This Great Comet drama is EXCITING *Patti cringes, next one is also about Great Comet* “Okay I’m not reading those” (omg)
Seth takes this huge stack of pages and auctions it on stage for Equity Fights Aids.
Patti adds, “Wait, how much would you give if I read all of them to you over drinks at the St. Regis?”
Seth: “You get Patti’s stack of notes. Please put them on Instagram. There’s many inappropriate ones she refused to read. Also, Patti LuPone herself will read her notes to you over dinner.
Patti: “Not dinner.” (She’s not buying you dinner LOLOLOL)
- Seth: “Patti has a lot of feelings about the President”
-Patti tells a story about working as a waitress at a skeevy bar with some skeevy guys in college, one of whom somehow got them down into the foundations of Juilliard and stuck a gun into the small of her back, sort of jokingly to scare her. She hears herself telling this story, “Wow, I am the picture of class”
-Howard McGillin, Billy to Patti’s Reno in the 1987 Anything Goes joins Patti on stage, they sing “You’re The Top” together. Seth asks Patti how she came up with the sexy Reno characterization.
Patti: “It’s inherent in the lyrics. Like Blow, Gabriel Blow” *Audience Laughs*
Patti: Oh, that’s not what I mean. Oh! I mean the lines “Good by day, good by night in that song”
Oh my god, not BLOW Gabriel. Oh, no.
Seth: What’s sexy about good by day, good by night?
Patti: She’s good by day and …good….by night, oh, YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!
-Patti’s drinking a huge glass of Prosecco:
She sips happily for awhile. “Oh, I feel sick from the wine”. Getting a little clumsy.
10 minutes later: “Never mind, I feel good now. It’s like when you have a drug and you’re like ugh this is awful, give me another!”
30 minutes later, she’s polished off most of her wine, the third encore is “With One Look”, she gets one bar in, stops abruptly: “Oh, I have to burp, I’m sorry”. Audience dies. She’s so embarrassed. So cute hahahaha
-Patti on her Glenn Close rehabilitation:
I didn’t want to sing Sunset, because I didn’t want people to think there are sour grapes. It’s Glenn’s role in New York. Mine in London. So I wasn’t gonna sing it in New York *pauses, thinking*… so I’ll sing the London version *laughter*
- Starts choking up when talking about the ephemeral beauty of theatre (good vocab word, Patti) and how it exists mostly in memory
-Patti talked about how she loves imperfect voices with soul a hundred times more than a perfect instrument with no feeling. Perfect voices are nothing without soul, but also people who sing with soul must be imperfect. Interesting. That’s why she doesn’t like to listen to a lot of today’s Broadway singers. She listens to Joni Mitchell.
-She made the final call back for the Sweet Charity national tour at 17, but didn’t get the part. She never booked any professional rolls before Juilliard. Patti: “Do they still even do cattle calls?” Seth: “Yes, people still audition, Patti. Omg.”
- The Magaldi guy from the Deconstructing Patti London concert YouTube video, flew out to NY to serve as random Magaldi guy again when Seth called him. A couple of us asked for his autograph and he absolutely flipped a shit he was so excited “THIS NEVER HAPPENS IN LONDON”
-Che was sung by Raul Esparza for several songs. “Well this is a fucking dream come true” he said about singing with Patti. There was also an original Evita cast member who sang the word HAIR in
“Eyes, hair, mouth, figure
Dress, voice, style, movement”
He joins them on stage to sing the word HAIR in “Rainbow High” He is my new hero. She struggles a bit with Rainbow High “Well, there’s one for my next voice lesson”
-Frances Ruffelle, the original Eponine on the West End and Broadway, came out to sing with Patti. She didn’t sing very well, but Patti was very emotional to hear her sing again
-When Patti was in the chorus for the barricade scenes in Les Mis she had to pick a “job”. She really did not want to be in the chorus so she just picked what the guy next to her was doing which was smelting She wasn’t even really sure what a smelter does so she goes out there and pantomimes smelting some hot metal over a bale of hay. The director is like “Patti, you’re an idiot”. The next night, she goes out there and smelts over the hay again, pretends the hay caught on fire, and spends the scene silently putting out her hay fire
-She doesn’t really like the current production of Hello, Dolly! because she does not like how it’s a recreation of Carol Channing’s productions without any new discovery for the actors allowed by the director
-Patti: “You used to be able to get to the theatre. Now Times Square is all focused on a Hershey bar!” Seth: “A Hershey bar? A single bar?”
-Sings “Trouble” from The Music Man 10x better than in the YouTube video. FANTASTIC.
-Seth talked a lot about how a lot of her habits would be considered unprofessional, like how she always looks out at the audience before shows.
Patti: That’s not unprofessional!
Seth: It is. You peering out with your Evita wig on!
Patti: Yeah, well with Evita, I would get caught! People would wave to me so I’d just wave back!
Well, I want to see the guy who hates my guts, who will be the hardest to convince. I want to play to him. At this show, I looked out and saw everyone fanning themselves. So I went back and said TURN UP THE AC THE PEOPLE ARE HOT OUT THERE. You gotta take care of your audience.
-Patti on Lack of Common Sense (paraphrased): “I’ve never had any savvy-dressing for auditions, re-booking canceled flights. I thought I was supposed to stand behind the taped line in the A Chorus Line theatre at my Evita audition, so I took a big step in front of it. It was just the line in A Chorus Line. My brother was in A Fucking Chorus Line. I’d seen it. Several times. Still didn’t make that connection. Yet, I heard about auditions and things. Not sure where I found out about that stuff at all! That’s how you know it’s meant to be. I just found out about these casting calls even though I was clueless.
-Patti and Seth fight over ALW:
Seth: He’s great [in Evita].
Patti: *Makes disgusted face*
Seth: No this really is great.
-She ends with the Ladies Who Lunch. You can tell she’s working on her character for the revival. It’s very different from her Lonny Price version, seems much darker and more subdued. I’m excited to see what she develops.
-I’ve heard her live before but it’s still such a shock to me. Her voice is nothing short of incredible. Her high tones are less crystalline in her older age, but her low tones are so much richer. I thought her voice sounded a little raspy, like she was losing it, but it didn’t keep her from hitting any of those belts (except Rainbow High, which was kinda mean of Seth lol) I’m going to War Paint closing night in December. She didn’t come out the stage door tonight so I have my fingers crossed for December.
Hope you guys feel like you were there with me! I know a lot of you wish you could be there so I wanted to be thorough. Let me know if you have any questions!
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