Catch Patti LuPone on Tour with 'A Life in Notes' and Get Ready with These YouTube Clips

'Anything Goes' from 'Anything Goes'

In 1988 Lincoln Center Theater revived the classic Cole Porter musical "Anything Goes" with a new book by John Weidman and Timothy Crouse and its showgirl lead, Reno Sweeney, played by LuPone. With the score re-orchestrated for a dance band and a lavish production, the revival was a big hit that gave LuPone her third Tony nomination for playing the saucy Reno. Here is a clip of her singing the title song from the Tony Awards.

With One Look' from 'Sunset Boulevard'

Everyone makes mistakes. In LuPone's case it was taking Andrew Lloyd Webber's offer to star as Norma Desmond in his adaptation of the film "Sunset Boulevard" in London. It led to what the Guardian called "one of the most infamous feuds in theatre." London was thought to be the first stop for the luxe musical prior to New York. LuPone appeared to be a great choice to play forgotten silent movie star. Even the film's director Billy Wilder was impressed, saying LuPone was "a star from the moment she walks on stage" after the London premiere; but critics thought otherwise and the show was finding difficult to sustain its large operating costs. Then nine months into the run, LuPone was unceremoniously dumped by Webber and replaced with Betty Buckley. When it opened on Broadway, Glenn Close triumphed in the role, winning a Tony. But it is LuPone who had the last laugh, suing Webber and receiving $1 million in a settlement. She said she later used some of the money to build a swimming pool in her Connecticut home, naming it the Andrew Lloyd Webber Memorial Pool. She subsequently didn't sing any songs from the show until she appeared in London in 2013 when she sang "With One Look" with Seth Rudetsky. Could "As If We Never Said Goodbye" be part of her set?

'Everything's Coming Up Roses' from 'Gypsy'

In 2001 she began a collaboration with the Chicago Ravinia Festival where she starred in a six-year-long series of concert presentations of Stephen Sondheim musicals to honor his 70th birthday. Subsequently, two of them made it to Broadway: "Sweeney Todd" in John Doyle's minimalist production that featured the actors all playing instruments. (LuPone played the tuba.) Her Mrs. Lovett brought her another Tony nomination. She followed "Todd" with "Gypsy" in 2009, for which she won her second Tony Award as Best Actress in a Musical. But it was towards the end of the run that LuPone made headlines when she admonished an audience member for taking snaps of her while she performed "Rose's Turn." When the camera's flash threw off LuPone's footing, she stopped mid-number to speak to the unseen audience member. ""Stop taking pictures RIGHT NOW. Who do you think you are?" she screamed, in a rant that further cemented her reputation as a diva. She doubled-down on her 'don't mess with Patti LuPone rep' with two other incidents since then. In one she took the cell phone away from an audience member (who were sitting on the stage); in another she talked down audience members for not wearing their masks properly under Covid protocols.

'The Ladies Who Lunch' from 'Company'

"Does anyone still wear a hat?" is a line long identified with Elaine Stritch, who originated it when she played Joanne in Stephen Sondheim's "Company" in 1969. But LuPone all but appropriated the line when she played the role in the recent Tony-winning revival (that also won her a third Tony, this time for Supporting Actress in a Musical). In the musical, Joanne is a moneyed matron who stops the show with her drunken rant, "The Ladies Who Lunch" when she comes onto the show's protagonist, a bachelor named Bobby. In director Marianne Elliott's 2018 re-imagining, the show's lead is played by a woman, renamed Bobbie, which gives this scene an interesting same sex twist. LuPone was part of the original London production and won her second Olivier. When it transfer to Broadway in 2020, it close shortly after opening due to the Covid epidemic. It triumphed the following year when it reopened. Watch LuPone sing "The Ladies Who Lunch" on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

'I'm Still Here' from 'Pose'

"I know you are all thinking, who is this broad and why is she singing at an AIDS benefit?" says Frederica Norman, played by LuPone on the FX series "Pose." Norman is something of monster – a vicious and transphobic real estate tycoon – who inexplicably turns up at a benefit for AIDS that took place in a hospital ward and sings Sondheim anthem of show business survival, "I'm Still Here" with considerable panache. If anyone has rights to own that song today, it is LuPone.