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Everything's coming up Rose for 'Gypsy's' Patti LuPone

BY ROBERT KAHN | robert.kahn@newsday.com

March 23, 2008

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In 1966, Patti LuPone was doing the same thing she is today. Starring in "Gypsy."

Then, it was a production by a neighborhood theater troupe, the Patio Players, which borrowed space at the old Northport High School. LuPone played neglected daughter Louise - as in, "Sing out, Louise!" - who goes on to become a burlesque star. Mama Rose on Broadway was still 40 years off.

"As Louise, I was singing 'Let me entertain you' and stripping in front of the people who were going to be my teachers in September," says LuPone, who was then 16. "I remember thinking, 'There's something wrong with this picture.'"

If LuPone felt exposed then, imagine how she must feel today. In her career, the Northport native has been handed the juggernaut female roles of musical theater: Eva Peron in "Evita" (a Tony in 1979), Fantine in "Les Miserables" and Norma Desmond in "Sunset Boulevard," both in London. Arguably, none has been more anticipated than Rose, the hellcat stage mother who drags her two daughters across Depression-era America to fulfill her own stifled desires.

"Gypsy," starring LuPone as Rose and directed by Arthur Laurents, who wrote the original book, opens Thursday at the St. James Theatre. It's a full-scale take on the Encores! production that ran last summer at City Center.

LuPone had her sights set on "Gypsy" even before the Patio Players commandeered the backyard of classmate Cathy Sheldon. Growing up, she would visit the A&P in Northport and spend a dollar on soundtracks from the "Ed Sullivan Presents" series. The "Gypsy" album left her wanting to play Tulsa, the toe-tapping (nevermind male) dancer who runs off with June, or perhaps Mazeppa, the stripper who grinds out "You Gotta Have a Gimmick."

"Rose," LuPone says, "was something else."

LuPone's brassy march across the pop-culture landscape has included segues into television, film and even opera, as well as a trio of one-woman shows she performs around the country. Two seasons ago, she was Tony-nominated again as the tuba-tooting Mrs. Lovett of "Sweeney Todd."

But her Rose - which she calls "the culmination of all my training and experience" - almost never got to blossom.

In 1995, LuPone was in talks to join the Seattle cast of "Jolson Sings Again," a new play by Laurents about McCarthy-era Hollywood. The deal fell through over a contract dispute. Supposedly, LuPone wanted a guarantee that the show would come to New York with her as its star. A few years earlier, Andrew Lloyd Webber had replaced LuPone with Glenn Close as "Sunset Boulevard" transferred to Broadway from London.

"Jolson" with LuPone never happened, but the skirmish would haunt her later. In 2003, British director Sam Mendes was planning a revival of "Gypsy" in which LuPone believed she was set to star. Instead, she received a letter that said she was not "approved casting" for his production.

LuPone believes that Laurents was bitter about her departure from the "Jolson" musical and blacklisted her from the "first-class" stagings over which he had casting jurisdiction.

"It was very painful," LuPone says.

Laurents, indeed, was angry with LuPone over the Seattle episode - "Absolutely true," the writer said in a phone interview - but also says he was "long over it" by the time the Mendes take on "Gypsy" was developing. He says Bernadette Peters was the only actress ever promised the job.

Laurents had directed the 1974 and 1989 revivals of "Gypsy," but for the 2003 effort he turned to Mendes, who intended to first launch "Gypsy" at the Donmar Warehouse in London. That never transpired, but Mendes eventually brought "Gypsy" to New York anyway, with Peters as Rose.

"From the very beginning, it was supposed to be Bernadette Peters," Laurents repeats.

It's unclear how long tensions simmered, but several events finally paved the way for LuPone's turn. On the urging of some in her inner circle, notably "Gypsy" producer Scott Rudin, who also had been involved with the "Jolson" play, LuPone called Laurents to make nice.

It helped, too, that LuPone had performed in the Ravinia Festival in Chicago, which has included tributes to "Gypsy" lyricist Stephen Sondheim. In 2006, LuPone took on Rose there.

Still, Laurents might not have been swayed were it not for a plea from his partner of a half-century, Tom Hatcher, during the last months of Hatcher's life. Says Laurents: "The truth is, I lived for 52 years with a man and he said to me, 'Do it with her at City Center.'"

As recently as last month, LuPone and Laurents might occasionally butt heads over pacing in a song, but LuPone says she always felt free to speak her mind at table readings.

"Arthur and I went through something that, clearly, we had to go through to get to this point now," LuPone says. But there is, she says, "a trust."

At 59, LuPone is older than any of the Roses who came before - a point she is quick to raise. Merman was 50 when she starred in the 1959 original. ( Angela Lansbury was 48, Tyne Daly was 45 and Peters 55.) Age is a factor because of the vocal demands in songs such as "Everything's Coming Up Roses" and Mama's frothing finale, "Rose's Turn."

"Nobody is getting to be 59 years old and playing this part," LuPone says.

"Uh-uh."

LuPone has traveled in Merman's footsteps before ("Anything Goes") and calls Rose a part that can withstand infinite interpretation, "as Hamlet does, as Othello does, as Macbeth does."

"Rose did it all for her kids, and she did not do it with any malice," LuPone says. "It isn't totally innocent. There's a desperation about her. But she's very likable. I couldn't play her if I didn't like her.

"Do you want to go to the theater and just see somebody you don't like?"