Patti LuPone not retiring; laments 'dumbing down' of Broadway audiences

Northport-native Broadway legend Patti LuPone has assured that she is not retiring, despite her recent, highly public resignation from the stage-actors union. 

“I just gave up my [Actors'] Equity [Association] card, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t perform onstage,” the three-time Tony Award winner, 73, told Variety at the premiere of her Netflix movie “The School for Good and Evil” in Los Angeles Tuesday.  “It’s 50 years that I’ve been a member of Actors' Equity, and I think I need a break from the stage," she added, noting she could still make guest appearances without needing union membership.

The "Evita" star, whose third Tony Award came earlier this year for her featured role in the revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical "Company," had tweeted Monday that she "[g]ave up my Equity card; no longer part of that circus. Figure it out." She subsequently said in a statement, "When the run of ‘Company’ ended this past July, I knew I wouldn’t be onstage for a very long time. And at that point I made the decision to resign from Equity.”

LuPone at the premiere also lamented that Broadway theater has "changed considerably" for the worse and that "whoever’s in charge of whatever has actively dumbed down the audience. And so the attention span of the majority of the audience, I think, is much less than it was in the past, and I don’t think plays are going to have long lives on Broadway — I feel as though it’s turning into Disneyland, a circus and Las Vegas.”

She added there are "still very intelligent audiences that support the theater, but the ticket price is outrageous," and lamented "so many obstacles that prevent theater from being the tool it should be in society, which is an education.”

LuPone, who developed her love of theater and performing while a student at Ocean Avenue Elementary School and Northport High School in the 1950s and '60s, has been a Broadway luminary since 1973, appearing or starring in more than two dozen musicals, comedies and dramas.

She additionally has two Grammy Awards, and this year received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

"The School for Good and Evil" began streaming Wednesday. LuPone, who has had a long career in film and TV as well as onstage, also stars in the new season of FX's "American Horror Story," which also debuted Wednesday.