Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from iHeart Radio. According to the online Urban Dictionary,
Speaker 1: today's guest has become a verb. To LuPone is quote
Speaker 1: to give an outstanding theatrical performance, to make an audience
Speaker 1: revel in, open mouthed awe at your unparalleled brilliance. Unquote.
Speaker 2: Don't cry for me, gentlea. The truth is I never
Speaker 2: left you.
Speaker 3: All through my wild days, my mad existence, I kept
Speaker 3: my promise.
Speaker 2: Dorge your dist.
Speaker 1: Patty Lapone has twenty six Broadway credits to date and
Speaker 1: has won two Tony's, one for Evida and one for
Speaker 1: Gypsy in London. She originated the role of Norma Desmond
Speaker 1: in Sunset Boulevard and Fantine in Les Miserabla, for which
Speaker 1: she won an Olivier Award. She's worked in film and
Speaker 1: on television, most notably as the mom on the ABC
Speaker 1: drama Life Goes On. Before all this success, Patty was
Speaker 1: in the first class of the Drama Division at Juilliard
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty eight, which seems like a reasonable place
Speaker 1: to start dreaming of a career in the theater. But
Speaker 1: Patty Lapone's story really begins even earlier.
Speaker 4: I knew when I was a kid that I had
Speaker 4: a Broadway voice. I wanted to be a rocker because
Speaker 4: I grew up in that era of transistor radios at
Speaker 4: the beach, you know, the rascals. We started in the fifties,
Speaker 4: Little Anthony in the Imperials. I mean, all through the
Speaker 4: fifties and sixties and seventies, I knew I didn't have
Speaker 4: a rock voice. Though I knew I had a Broadway voice.
Speaker 2: This is all.
Speaker 4: Instinctual behavior, completely instinctual behavior. And my mom listened to
Speaker 4: opera and my dad listened to jazz.
Speaker 1: What did he do?
Speaker 4: He was a principal of an lamentary school on Long
Speaker 4: Island in Northport, and my mom was a housewife, a homemaker.
Speaker 1: How many kids in your family?
Speaker 4: Twin brothers and me, you know, typical in a ranch
Speaker 4: house on Long Island, right, typical. I know the drum, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: And I was enrolled in dance at four years old,
Speaker 4: and I fell in love with the stage. But that
Speaker 4: wasn't really the first inkling of some sort of connection
Speaker 4: to the stage. My mother used to troop me out
Speaker 4: in front of guests to do my Marilyn Monroe imitation,
Speaker 4: and I don't even know how I came up with this,
Speaker 4: but I would come out, they'd laugh, and I'd go, oh,
Speaker 4: this is cool. Like you know I was. I was
Speaker 4: pretty astute when I was very very young, pretty. So
Speaker 4: I started dancing, and I fell in love with the audience,
Speaker 4: and so the performance aspect started very very young in dance.
Speaker 4: When Julliard happened, well, my brother attended the dance division
Speaker 4: of the Juilliard School and told me that they were
Speaker 4: starting a drama division. I actually had moved into New
Speaker 4: York City and was auditioning for musicals and working, and
Speaker 4: I just wanted to be in musicals and hang out
Speaker 4: in New York City and party. And I auditioned and
Speaker 4: I got in. And what happened in the four years
Speaker 4: the course of the four years of the Juilliard School,
Speaker 4: I fell out of love with musical and in love
Speaker 4: with classical theater. And I was actually trained as a
Speaker 4: classical actress. So we did know a lot of other
Speaker 4: great classical actress Yes, Kevin Klein, David Steyers, David Shram,
Speaker 4: Mary Louisatto, and then of course the classes below me
Speaker 4: have gained more recognition than my class did. We were
Speaker 4: the very first class.
Speaker 1: But that girl from Northport who's doing Marilyn Monroe impersonations
Speaker 1: in the ranch house with your family, what's that like
Speaker 1: for you that transitioned to be in that very heady, sophisticated.
Speaker 4: With Well, it was tough for me because I was
Speaker 4: not a favorite at school. My best friend, who I
Speaker 4: met in the first year, Nancy Nichols, was a favorite
Speaker 4: and I was not. But Nancy and I would always
Speaker 4: palle around together and make trouble, but Nancy would get
Speaker 4: the roles and I would not. And that went on
Speaker 4: for several years. I think it was only my third
Speaker 4: year when I realized that they were trying to throw
Speaker 4: me out of school. And what they did. They couldn't
Speaker 4: throw me up because they didn't like my personality. But
Speaker 4: what they did was they through every conceivable role in
Speaker 4: my direction to make me fail as an actor. But
Speaker 4: what happened was they that they didn't belong. Yeah, they
Speaker 4: didn't like me. They or you know, I didn't get cut.
Speaker 4: Every year students got cut, So we started with they
Speaker 4: wanted to years. We ended up with the seventeen of
Speaker 4: the original thirty six. In the fourth year. I never
Speaker 4: got cut. So I'm confused as to why that actually happened,
Speaker 4: because why didn't they just cut me? Possibly because every
Speaker 4: role I played I succeeded in. But what they did
Speaker 4: was they trained one actor in my class and versatility,
Speaker 4: and the rest of them were pigeonholed, as you know,
Speaker 4: life will pigeonhole you into exactly the sub brett, the
Speaker 4: leading lady, the character woman. But I went back and forth,
Speaker 4: back and forth, back and forth, which taught me that
Speaker 4: I could.
Speaker 1: There were no boundaries, no, and if you look.
Speaker 4: At my history, I've done more plays than i've done musicals.
Speaker 4: But because I guess the voice is a powerful instrument,
Speaker 4: do you know what I mean? And it's an American
Speaker 4: cultural event, the American broad the musical, not the Broadway.
Speaker 1: Well, also the music that you've performed when someone is
Speaker 1: as successful as you, And I've said this to people
Speaker 1: who have careers of music beyond the theater, as leading
Speaker 1: actresses in the theater. Music distinguishes things because it's a
Speaker 1: product you can consume anywhere. You know, your career goes
Speaker 1: to another level when I can drive in my car
Speaker 1: and listen to the soundtracks.
Speaker 4: When anything goes I never thought about that I can.
Speaker 1: Be on the beach and I can listen to the
Speaker 1: soundtrack from Sweeney Todd music. Performers will always have the
Speaker 1: upper hand on actors. But you were saying, how the
Speaker 1: versatility thing. You were almost forced to embrace this versatility
Speaker 1: to survive. And you graduate from that program the first
Speaker 1: class graduates.
Speaker 4: What year nineteen seventy two and where do you go?
Speaker 4: John Housman in our third year, he presented a season
Speaker 4: to the prominent people in New York theater and critics,
Speaker 4: and mel Gusa was the one that said. Mel Gusa
Speaker 4: was a second string critic for the New York Times,
Speaker 4: and he was the one that said, why break this
Speaker 4: company up? Why not form a permanent acting company? Which
Speaker 4: was John's q. And when we graduated, he handed us
Speaker 4: our equity card and four years. But we stayed for
Speaker 4: four years of touring the country performing classical plays in
Speaker 4: true revolving rep which is a different play every single night.
Speaker 4: So we got even more training because in our first
Speaker 4: year we lost several bookings because we didn't know how
Speaker 4: to tour, We didn't know how to maintain a performance.
Speaker 4: We only did three at Juilliard and we had no
Speaker 4: idea what happened on the fourth and that sounds crazy,
Speaker 4: but it's we lost.
Speaker 1: Do you think this acting company idea and the touring
Speaker 1: was what Hausman had up asleeve the whole time when
Speaker 1: he instigated the Juilliard program, No, I.
Speaker 4: Don't think so. You know, the training was intense and
Speaker 4: emotionally intense, psychologically intense, physically intense. By there was one
Speaker 4: production where the company formed an invisible circle of support
Speaker 4: around each other, and that was his He saw the
Speaker 4: ensemble and I remember, I mean it was it bores
Speaker 4: to Marn's production of You from the Bridge, and oh,
Speaker 4: I could cry now thinking of it. It was an extraordinary,
Speaker 4: powerful experience to be a student actor but in a
Speaker 4: professional mindset. And I remember our curtain call and the
Speaker 4: pride and the power, and it was an amazing moment
Speaker 4: that changed the course of all of us. And we
Speaker 4: understood what ensemble meant, and we understood what support meant,
Speaker 4: and we understood the power we had as individuals and
Speaker 4: as actors. And John saw that in his actors. There's
Speaker 4: been a couple of experiences that I've had that it's
Speaker 4: that same ensemble mentality. So that's the other thing I
Speaker 4: have to interject here when I left Juilliard and left
Speaker 4: the acting company, and then of course landed musicals. We
Speaker 4: all did, by the way David Stiers did, Kevin did,
Speaker 4: Mandy did. We all ended musicals. But there's only a
Speaker 4: couple of times where I felt I had that kind
Speaker 4: of ensemble. And one was Lima's in London because it
Speaker 4: was a Royal Shakespeare Company actors. And the other was Gypsy,
Speaker 4: where every actor owned their part, big or small, and
Speaker 4: gave themselves to the play every single night. The other
Speaker 4: one was Sweeney Too, because and our stage manager said
Speaker 4: in Sweeney that we acted more like a band than
Speaker 4: a bunch of actors. Right.
Speaker 1: I love that feeling. So the acting company thing lasts
Speaker 1: for how long? You didn't?
Speaker 4: I did it for four years. Nobody goes in for
Speaker 4: four years anymore. We all did it for four years,
Speaker 4: and you know, I thought about the other I don't
Speaker 4: know why we stayed, except we thought, I'm sure we
Speaker 4: all went we are not going to be able to
Speaker 4: play these parts in real life.
Speaker 1: And that was back in a time when there were
Speaker 1: the very last vapors in the air here in New
Speaker 1: York of the old way, and the old way was
Speaker 1: you went downtown, and you sat carried a spear for Joe,
Speaker 1: or you carried a spear in the park. And there
Speaker 1: was an apprenticeship in the theater. And if you didn't
Speaker 1: have cred in the theater, Raoul and Chris Walkin and
Speaker 1: Sir Gurney and you and Kevin and everybody, everybody who
Speaker 1: were the princes and princesses and Mandy of the theater
Speaker 1: in New York, that's where you headed. So when you
Speaker 1: finished the acting company and you've decided, you know, you've
Speaker 1: done enough, it's four years, which was a typical of people.
Speaker 1: Then where do you go?
Speaker 4: Then we came home, Kevin and I came home.
Speaker 1: And so you're with Kevin. Yes, Kevin and you were
Speaker 1: Kevin and you were a.
Speaker 4: Couple for seven years. We broke up, we got back together,
Speaker 4: we broke up, we got back together, we broke up,
Speaker 4: We got back.
Speaker 1: To Can you imagine the children you would have had
Speaker 1: for him? Good God, in heaven, good God, they would
Speaker 1: have a theater big enough to house that person's ego
Speaker 1: and talent.
Speaker 4: So we both came home and Kevin went off and
Speaker 4: did a play, and I had auditions four I didn't
Speaker 4: get the Baker's Wife Stephen Schwartz musical The Baker's Wife,
Speaker 4: based on marcell Panos La fem de Boulange. But I
Speaker 4: got a telephone call from David Merrick's general manager, Helen Nickerson,
Speaker 4: and to ask if I was free because they wanted
Speaker 4: me to come out to La to replace the leading lady.
Speaker 4: And I wanted to do this musical so badly, so
Speaker 4: I went out and I did my first big, gut wrenching,
Speaker 4: rip out of your body, squish heart, the most horrible,
Speaker 4: vulnerable experience of my life, The Baker's Wife.
Speaker 5: Who does he think he is? Who could be as handsome?
Speaker 5: Who could be as smart as he thinks he is?
Speaker 5: He just had to snap his fingers. Women fall up?
Speaker 5: What does he think that'll.
Speaker 2: Slink away with him? Palla him rise?
Speaker 4: And truly it was an unbelievable disaster, and we were
Speaker 4: on the road for six months. That is that's the
Speaker 4: big question. It is a great idea, it's a great film.
Speaker 4: It had Stephen Schwartz music, it had Joe Melziner's last sets,
Speaker 4: Jennifer Tipped into the lights and the one Oldrins did
Speaker 4: the costumes. David Merrick was producing. It had all the
Speaker 4: potential to be a smash hit, and it got progressive.
Speaker 4: I joined two days after they opened in LA and
Speaker 4: it got progressively worse. For you knew months and no
Speaker 4: I thought it was going to be okay, but I
Speaker 4: didn't realize that nobody realized what was really going to
Speaker 4: happen to us and it and what did happen, Well,
Speaker 4: six people were fired. The show never got better. David
Speaker 4: Merrick came out. One of the most theatrical moments I've
Speaker 4: ever had in my career was David Merrick showing up
Speaker 4: in San Francisco. We were performing in San Francisco with
Speaker 4: no director. We were told to stay after the show.
Speaker 4: They assembled us on the stage and there was it
Speaker 4: was not lit except for the ghost light. David Merrick
Speaker 4: showed up and stood in front of the ghost light,
Speaker 4: so he was totally backlit. Couldn't see his face, only
Speaker 4: saw the outline of a long coat and a bowler hat,
Speaker 4: and proceeded to ask us to go into rehearsal for nothing,
Speaker 4: so that we could save this wonderful show. And it
Speaker 4: was so dramatic, because he's incredibly dramatic, and so in
Speaker 4: the light of day, everybody went what we had just
Speaker 4: gotten out of rehearsal for nothing. We were in rehearsal
Speaker 4: every single day, performing at night for six months. And
Speaker 4: what we rehearsed that day when in that night, only
Speaker 4: to rehearse the next day, and that stuff would come out,
Speaker 4: some new stuff would go in that was not better
Speaker 4: than what we had just taken.
Speaker 1: We're in a laboratory. We were in you were in
Speaker 1: Doctor Frankenstein's.
Speaker 4: The people were dying, the rats were dying, the rats
Speaker 4: were losing air. Oh my god, it was so horrible.
Speaker 4: And you know, there's an expression, Larry Galbart's expression. If
Speaker 4: Hitler were alive today, his punishment should be to send
Speaker 4: him out on the road with the music in trouble.
Speaker 1: I did a movie once in the movie was going
Speaker 1: really badly and said, this is as if the government
Speaker 1: made movies.
Speaker 4: You know, I've always said, there's a fine line between
Speaker 4: a hit and a flop. And you don't know what
Speaker 4: it is. You don't know why it is a hit,
Speaker 4: and you don't know why it is a flop. You know,
Speaker 4: if it's really terrible, you know right off the bat,
Speaker 4: and you're not going to take the job. But if
Speaker 4: it has the potential to be a hit and ends
Speaker 4: up being a flop. You can't figure it out, so you.
Speaker 1: Do this show and when you come out of that, like,
Speaker 1: what's the lesson for you? Was there something you said
Speaker 1: to yourself? Never again am I going to no?
Speaker 4: I went into a depression for nine months. I was
Speaker 4: on valium to sleep for the six months, and I
Speaker 4: went into a valium depression for nine months, gained forty pounds,
Speaker 4: woke up went what the hell just happened? And I
Speaker 4: couldn't say you think that?
Speaker 1: It is like like you care a lot. There's nothing
Speaker 1: casual about you. There's nothing amateurish about you. You know,
Speaker 1: you're very serious and you're very dedicated. You're very hard
Speaker 1: working along with being very talented, and you feel these wounds.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that is why?
Speaker 4: Our business is subjective? It's all subjective, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean? You talk to anybody from the baker's wife
Speaker 4: and they can remember it as if it was yesterday,
Speaker 4: and there's blood spilled, and we became blood a blood family.
Speaker 4: I just said to me Jerome, who's in phantom now
Speaker 4: and we see each other and what we recall is
Speaker 4: that bonding in that horrible experience, and we can talk
Speaker 4: about it as if it was yesterday. I think it's
Speaker 4: because you know, it happened to us. Of course it
Speaker 4: happened to the creators, but they're not on stage. We're
Speaker 4: on stage succeeding or failing in front of an audience.
Speaker 4: We're on stage being judged by the audience. We're the messengers.
Speaker 1: We're the ones who take the hit.
Speaker 4: We take the hit all the time. This was really abusive.
Speaker 4: It was just horrible. I woke up one morning and
Speaker 4: my face was filled with what looked like whiteheads. The
Speaker 4: entire face had raised bumps on it. I didn't know
Speaker 4: what it was. I went to sleep, well, God, and
Speaker 4: the entire face. I maybe it was from the valume.
Speaker 4: I have no idea what I was. Things were happening
Speaker 4: to us, physically happening to us. And when does the.
Speaker 1: Sun come out for you? When does the sun come
Speaker 1: out for Patty Lapone? Career wise?
Speaker 4: I think when I go back to work with David Mammott,
Speaker 4: I go back and work with David, I go into
Speaker 4: I mean, go back David and I did it play
Speaker 4: in Chicago? Was that after Baker's wife? Was that I see,
Speaker 4: I'm trying to keep I'm trying to keep it straight.
Speaker 1: What play did you do with him? First?
Speaker 4: The very first play I did with him was a
Speaker 4: thing called All Men or Whores Kevin sam ch Chiffish
Speaker 4: and I did it at Yelle Rep for one night.
Speaker 4: I said, Hey, Dave, we opened and closed in new Haven.
Speaker 4: And new Haven used to be one of the circuit
Speaker 4: you know, when you took a show out of town,
Speaker 4: your first stop was new Haven and it was a
Speaker 4: big deciding factor. So we opened and closed, we bombed well.
Speaker 4: And from there he gave me a play called The Woods.
Speaker 1: What happens when you do the Woods?
Speaker 4: Well, I go back to what I was trained for,
Speaker 4: and I go back to an honest environment pretty much.
Speaker 1: And you're back to the circle of trust. Yeah, eving
Speaker 1: feels right. This is more like it.
Speaker 4: And it's a risk. It's a big risk. And when
Speaker 4: every time I work with David I learned so much
Speaker 4: as a human being. Was that approximately and I think
Speaker 4: late nineteen seventy six, seventy seven, So you had a
Speaker 4: relationship with him, yes, well we met him in thirty
Speaker 4: five years. Yes, yes, and I will I will drop
Speaker 4: everything to do a play by David everything. I don't
Speaker 4: care how risky. It is. I learned so much from
Speaker 4: David and I instinctually have the mammot speak. That's something
Speaker 4: that I know how to do his rhythms, and I
Speaker 4: think it's because it's someone said I cut my teeth
Speaker 4: on David. David's words when you know, starting with allmen
Speaker 4: or whores and the woods and the water engine and Edmund.
Speaker 4: I had finished Devita and I went down to the
Speaker 4: Provincetome playoffs at the opening of Edmund, and I said,
Speaker 4: why couldn't I have been in this? In the back
Speaker 4: of my head? And not two weeks later I got
Speaker 4: a call from Gregorymoser and David saying would you replace
Speaker 4: to Linda's a Chicago actress, and she wanted to go
Speaker 4: back to Chicago. She was playing What the Wife. She
Speaker 4: came on and she was at the beginning, beginning, That's
Speaker 4: that's it, you know, and she visits broke.
Speaker 1: The dish or whatever it is exactly I'm leaving. She's
Speaker 1: what do you mean you're leaving? Of course we're leaving.
Speaker 1: We'read geting dress book and I think, no, I'm leaving
Speaker 1: you what do you know?
Speaker 5: This?
Speaker 4: Will you know?
Speaker 1: I begged Mammon to give me the right to do
Speaker 1: the movie, but he gave it to Bill Mason.
Speaker 4: And so I joined the company and my agent was
Speaker 4: so furious with me. He said, this will hurt your
Speaker 4: negotiational you know ability, And I went for what you know,
Speaker 4: If anybody in the business knows who I am, they
Speaker 4: know that this is where I came from before I
Speaker 4: did Ivita, and they did not want me to go backwards.
Speaker 4: They didn't want me to go to the Guthrie to
Speaker 4: do Rosalind and As You Like It. But I was
Speaker 4: able to work with leave U Chule, a great Romanian
Speaker 4: director which is passed god rest is soul, in his
Speaker 4: internationally famous production of As You Like It at the Guthnment.
Speaker 4: I was raked over the calls by the critics. One
Speaker 4: critic said, you know, basically, what was Ivita doing here?
Speaker 4: And it was It was difficult, as you say to
Speaker 4: rad all that, but I kept doing it because I
Speaker 4: was given the opportunity to do it, and I wasn't
Speaker 4: going to say no, I have to wait for the
Speaker 4: next ev de part to come along. If I waited
Speaker 4: for the next ev de part to come along my
Speaker 4: ten years, I'd still be waiting.
Speaker 1: Is a Vita. The next big thing for you, recollection
Speaker 1: Avida is the big thing is the.
Speaker 4: Thing that was nineteen seventy nine. But in because how
Speaker 4: does that happen? I auditioned Joanna Merlin is how princess
Speaker 4: casting director, and of course how directed, how directed, And
Speaker 4: as I said earlier, all of those people had come
Speaker 4: to see this acting company at Juilliard, this unsemble.
Speaker 1: They were aware of you.
Speaker 4: They were aware, yes, And so I was brought in
Speaker 4: for a preliminary audition, and then I was told to
Speaker 4: make myself free, make sure that I made myself free
Speaker 4: for the final callback. And as I understand it, How
Speaker 4: wanted to cast actors in the role the roles as
Speaker 4: opposed to just musical theater people. So I think that's
Speaker 4: one of the reasons why I got in there, because
Speaker 4: he knew, they knew I was an actor. Between there
Speaker 4: were several plays, there was stage directions by Israel Horovitz,
Speaker 4: John Glover, Ellen Green and I down at the public
Speaker 4: while Merrill's.
Speaker 1: Doing You're doing everything you can to scratch that inch
Speaker 1: of yours and not become a star.
Speaker 4: No, I get it, No, no, it was it was
Speaker 4: it was the available work.
Speaker 1: We're about to talk about the moment when perhaps one
Speaker 1: of the greatest musical stars of the last fifty years
Speaker 1: is born on Broadway. So let's talk about how that
Speaker 1: the moment this happens, how Prince wants people who can
Speaker 1: act and sing. And you go to the make yourself
Speaker 1: available to the final callback and what happened. How do
Speaker 1: you feel when you're in that room.
Speaker 4: Well, I was very mad because I was actually shooting
Speaker 4: nineteen forty one and there was a little issue about
Speaker 4: the Larch movie. Yes, about letting me go, and the
Speaker 4: producer said, if you're not back tomorrow or the next day,
Speaker 4: you'll never work in Hollywood again. So I left Hollywood
Speaker 4: with those words ringing in my ear. And I woke
Speaker 4: up in New York to the nineteen seventy eight blizzard
Speaker 4: where they are like two feet of snow on the ground.
Speaker 1: Couldn't get back to LA I couldn't.
Speaker 4: Get back to La No, Christopher Reeve got me on
Speaker 4: the plane. I only missed three hours of shooting. When
Speaker 4: they said how'd you get here, I said, Superman, it's
Speaker 4: a camaraderie exactly. So I went to the final callback,
Speaker 4: but I was really mad because I didn't want to
Speaker 4: do this musical. I didn't like the music. I thought, you, Vita,
Speaker 4: you didn't like it?
Speaker 1: Ah, what specifically? You're a smart woman, what specifically didn't
Speaker 1: you like?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 4: I didn't like. I heard the White album, the Julie Covington,
Speaker 4: David Essex, Colin Wilkinson, very rocky, weird music, but it
Speaker 4: rocked out a lot, and I thought, what's the matter.
Speaker 4: I'm a rocker. I want to be a rocker. It
Speaker 4: was really really high. Didn't grab me. I mean, I
Speaker 4: grew up on Rogers and Hammerstein, I grew up on
Speaker 4: Julie Stein, Meredith Wilson, Stephen Sondheime. This was not a
Speaker 4: musical to me. This was noise from Britain, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean? It wasn't. It just didn't. It didn't.
Speaker 1: So how did you go out there and do it?
Speaker 4: I went out and the final edition, I was wet
Speaker 4: from my knees down, wearing sneakers and jeans, not knowing
Speaker 4: it was going to snow. Who you know, I did
Speaker 4: so stupid. I didn't look at the weather report. I
Speaker 4: went out there and I blasted, literally blasted through rainbow
Speaker 4: high Buenos Aires and don't cry for me, Argentina and
Speaker 4: there were tears in my eyes, apparently, and there were
Speaker 4: there were tears of rage, necessarily, not tears of right.
Speaker 4: And I left and I got I got a call
Speaker 4: on the set. I made it back and I got
Speaker 4: a call on the set in the makeup trailer, and
Speaker 4: they said you've got the part. And I started to
Speaker 4: cry again because I had promised David that I would
Speaker 4: reprise The Woods at the Public Theater with Ullu gross
Speaker 4: Bar directing.
Speaker 1: What I love is that you're going to blow your
Speaker 1: Hollywood film career to go do a musical you don't
Speaker 1: even like, and then that one they offered to you're
Speaker 1: not sure you're going to think because you got to
Speaker 1: go to another little man play well.
Speaker 4: I had been trained to be an actor, and I
Speaker 4: thought my responsibility was to act at every possible opportunity,
Speaker 4: and especially good opportunity. You know it put you know,
Speaker 4: fly your craft and if it's good material. And I
Speaker 4: David and I forged a friendship and a bond, and
Speaker 4: I didn't want to let him down. David and I
Speaker 4: became really really good friends. David lived on twentieth Kevin
Speaker 4: and I lived on twenty first Street. He'd come over
Speaker 4: all the time. For breakfast, we'd walk around, we'd do Antia.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start calling you out by the way, because
Speaker 1: you keep changing the subject.
Speaker 4: What happened with how how did hell get you to
Speaker 4: do that material?
Speaker 1: And it became what it became?
Speaker 4: Well, No, I knew I had to do it. I
Speaker 4: cried because I knew that it would have to I
Speaker 4: couldn't do the Woods and I had to do a
Speaker 4: the Tip because I knew I wanted to work with
Speaker 4: hol and I knew that it would change the course
Speaker 4: of my career.
Speaker 1: You knew going in that was going to be a hit.
Speaker 4: There was so much hype before have.
Speaker 1: They done it in London?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So what is a big hit in London?
Speaker 4: Huge hit?
Speaker 1: And you were in the American cast. It was a
Speaker 1: huge hit in London, So you knew this was a
Speaker 1: big opportunity and.
Speaker 4: There was hype. You can't believe. That was my first
Speaker 4: indication that this was going to be a tough experience
Speaker 4: because it was I went, how am I going to
Speaker 4: get around the hype? It was the first musical that
Speaker 4: I was aware of that had so much pre opening
Speaker 4: hype the modern way, not even buzz, you know, not
Speaker 4: word of mouth, hype, media hype, and it was created,
Speaker 4: of course by really useful by Andrew's company, do you
Speaker 4: know what I mean? That's how he operates. And it
Speaker 4: was frightening and I had no vocal time. So now
Speaker 4: this thing is all hyped up.
Speaker 1: You've been through everything you've been through, You've had some
Speaker 1: good times and some tough times, and you've worked hard,
Speaker 1: god knows four years in the row with Housman in
Speaker 1: that company, and you step out for the Broadway opening,
Speaker 1: the opening of Avida. What was it like for you?
Speaker 1: How did they even perfect? Of course you did.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I threw up in the sink before I sank.
Speaker 4: Don't cry from me, Argentina. I'm sure it was a
Speaker 4: combination of I got. I got extremely bad notices opening
Speaker 4: in LA and extremely bad notices opening in San Francisco.
Speaker 4: And How came to me and said, we're going to
Speaker 4: laugh about this. In twenty years of Patty, they pulled
Speaker 4: the entire company together, and he said there was an
Speaker 4: article coming out in Susie nicker Parker's column the next
Speaker 4: day that I was going to be fired, and that
Speaker 4: Actor's Equity was waiting to clear Elaine Page to take
Speaker 4: my place, and this was in the newspapers A bad Yeah,
Speaker 4: she's the one that originated in London. I'm dealing with
Speaker 4: all of this press of me being fired and me
Speaker 4: not being able to sing the part and still going
Speaker 4: on for my.
Speaker 1: Well that was that was opening night, and so so
Speaker 1: you go out and do the opening of What Happens?
Speaker 4: Bad reviews again, Actually they weren't bad. They dismissed how
Speaker 4: and is this was an innovative This was an innovative
Speaker 4: concept and innovative production. They dismissed how and they barely
Speaker 4: touched on Mandy and me. And that's worse when you're ignored.
Speaker 4: It's one thing if they're passionate and you're back and
Speaker 4: passionate when you're good, but when you're ignored. And Mandy
Speaker 4: and I at one point I said you want to
Speaker 4: go out for a drink? He said yeah. We were
Speaker 4: on fifty second. I think that's where the bread with theaters.
Speaker 4: And we walked down eighth Avenue and simultaneously we burst
Speaker 4: into tears. I mean, we worked hard in those parts
Speaker 4: and then to be ignored is tough. And then of
Speaker 4: course nine months later they give us the Tonys.
Speaker 1: More after the break, when you win the Tony did.
Speaker 1: Was it any vindication for you at all? Or was
Speaker 1: it just a.
Speaker 4: Yeah? Such a relief. It was such a relief because
Speaker 4: really have you read? Because I was still performing and
Speaker 4: still scared out of my mind. Every night I envied
Speaker 4: Mandy because Mandy was just all over the place. He
Speaker 4: didn't have a problem singing it. So he literally he
Speaker 4: told me. He told me something the other day we
Speaker 4: were talking about it beat He said, well, how tell
Speaker 4: me to go? He wanted me over there, and I
Speaker 4: said to how how do I get there? He said,
Speaker 4: I don't know, just get there, And so that's where
Speaker 4: he does a jette across the stage and I went.
Speaker 4: I would see it every night, going why is Mandy
Speaker 4: doing that? And it was because Hal told him to
Speaker 4: get there, get there, and he didn't care. How so
Speaker 4: Mandy put it in and it became part of his performance.
Speaker 4: And so I suppose in that respect, how gives the
Speaker 4: actor freedom? But I didn't have that freedom because I
Speaker 4: was so tied up in a not because I didn't
Speaker 4: think I could sing it.
Speaker 2: I wanna be be when a apne what I did.
Speaker 4: If I hadn't thought, if I hadn't known, we would
Speaker 4: stay to again. Really, you know when you in a
Speaker 4: rehearsal period, you know this, you have to do it
Speaker 4: over and over and over again, so you're not hitting
Speaker 4: that d in. Screw the middle classes once you're not
Speaker 4: hitting that g in. Screw the middle classes, once you're
Speaker 4: doing it over and over again. I didn't have vocal
Speaker 4: technique to know that. I didn't have to hit those
Speaker 4: notes every day. I didn't have vocal technique. I got
Speaker 4: it during the run by from a kidney chorus who
Speaker 4: David Rosberg I came stage in the tips. They got
Speaker 4: him a piano, that put a piano in my dressing room,
Speaker 4: and he worked with me an hour every single day
Speaker 4: before the show. He would come to me and work
Speaker 4: out of the goodness of his heart.
Speaker 1: David Vosper where is he.
Speaker 4: He's in Ohio. He's a director of opera. But he
Speaker 4: would give me a vocal technique. He would warm me up.
Speaker 4: And the difficult thing was to be to apply what
Speaker 4: he had just taught me that night. Because I would
Speaker 4: do one thing right, something else would go disastrously wrong.
Speaker 4: But at least I was getting a technique to sing
Speaker 4: that part. He saved my job, and they they knew
Speaker 4: that and they paid him.
Speaker 1: Now you say, when you talk about this, you talk
Speaker 1: about the tension and the anxiety and the fear, and
Speaker 1: you don't really want to necessarily be doing a vida
Speaker 1: because you got another David play and this and this
Speaker 1: and that. When did it start to become fun for you?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 4: Anything goes with a ball, Okay, So talk about that. Wow,
Speaker 4: because of the material and because of the cast, and
Speaker 4: it was hysterical, I mean Jerry's acts and Jerry did
Speaker 4: a great job of directors, yes he is. But however,
Speaker 4: these were the way musicals used to be written. You'd
Speaker 4: have a joke coming and then a gorgeous song. The
Speaker 4: material was so ripe and so beautiful. If I was
Speaker 4: in a bad mood, all I had to do was
Speaker 4: hear that. Okay, I know where I am tonight, just
Speaker 4: looking and at the audience and seeing tears of joy
Speaker 4: from laughter. The only thing we are as actors are messengers.
Speaker 4: That's all we are. Correct. We are delivering the playwright's
Speaker 4: intentions through the concept of the director. And I come
Speaker 4: on stage if I feel confident in the role, then
Speaker 4: I give it away. I give it away anyway. But
Speaker 4: it's all about them. So I have to go out
Speaker 4: there and love them, and I do. And I think
Speaker 4: they see that they can relax with me because they
Speaker 4: know I'm giving it to them. I'm not. You know,
Speaker 4: there are some actors that don't want to be on
Speaker 4: stage that because you just nailed it.
Speaker 1: Because Patty Lepone to me is a woman who comes
Speaker 1: out there and the first thing she sat up to
Speaker 1: and she's like, you know, how's everybody doing? It's like
Speaker 1: a little moment like a nightclub singer, like you know
Speaker 1: how you all doing tonight? Without saying how y' all
Speaker 1: doing tonight? Like just connect to them and let them
Speaker 1: feel like there's no place else we'd rather be is
Speaker 1: there than here? Right now?
Speaker 4: Well, I think our responsibility is to relax them. You've
Speaker 4: been in an audience. I've been in an audience where
Speaker 4: we're worried for the performer and then we're not having experience.
Speaker 4: They're paying a lot.
Speaker 1: And if I'm worried for the performer and they and
Speaker 1: they should be worried for, then I'm worried for me
Speaker 1: because I want to get the f out of there. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Hello. Our responsibility is the minute we hit the deck
Speaker 4: is to relax the audience. And that is what is
Speaker 4: called command.
Speaker 2: You're the colony, you're the top, You're You're a melody
Speaker 2: from a symphony by Strass. I say this on it.
Speaker 1: How long did you do anything?
Speaker 4: Goes ah, fifteen months? I think fifteen Oh, I laughed
Speaker 4: my ass off, and that'sa we had such a ball.
Speaker 1: And the same thing is, is this this idea that
Speaker 1: someone said to me, why do you like doing the theater?
Speaker 1: I mean, even now, did you get it? A lot
Speaker 1: of actors do it for a period and you get
Speaker 1: it out of your system. I said, you know, the
Speaker 1: one thing I've never gotten out of my system is
Speaker 1: if the play is the right play, I said, I
Speaker 1: go to work at six o'clock. I like to get
Speaker 1: to the theater early. Me too, the kind of drain
Speaker 1: the day out of me. And then I go out
Speaker 1: on stage and I said, you know what I love?
Speaker 1: I said, I know exactly what I'm going to say.
Speaker 1: I know exactly what the other guy is going to
Speaker 1: say for the next two and a half hours, and
Speaker 1: I know exactly how people are likely going to react.
Speaker 1: I said, how often can you say that in your life?
Speaker 1: You know exactly what's going to happen, And it's a
Speaker 1: good thing for the next two and a half hours
Speaker 1: of your life. I never get tired of that.
Speaker 4: No, and I it's magical. It's magical. And you said,
Speaker 4: drain the day out, drain the day out to have
Speaker 4: a magic good night. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 4: To have an experience with a group of people. Do
Speaker 4: you know I mean not just your your fellow actors
Speaker 4: on the stage, but people that want that leave the
Speaker 4: theater going oh my. I mean I've done that. I've
Speaker 4: walked out of a production going oh my, oh what
Speaker 4: street are we on? You know, we've been transported, We've
Speaker 4: been taken away, We've drained the day out of our life,
Speaker 4: and we've experienced something that has changed us. It's another
Speaker 4: thing I love about our profession, the arts. I mean,
Speaker 4: you can do that in the in the movies too.
Speaker 1: Was as a woman, as an actress who is known
Speaker 1: for a raft. Now of these heavy duty, you know,
Speaker 1: powerful musical roles, was there another one that I'm missing?
Speaker 1: Between Avida and No, we did all I did?
Speaker 4: Oliver? I did Oliver? I know Oliver here le miss
Speaker 4: in London. Who were the leads in Oliver, Ron Moody
Speaker 4: and Graham Campbell God Restless, so Ron Moody was reprising
Speaker 4: his Yeah he was great, beautiful.
Speaker 1: Song, gorgeous as long as he needs me, one of
Speaker 1: the most beautiful songs in all of the musical theater.
Speaker 2: God.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he wrote a great score. And then I went
Speaker 4: to London and did lea miz so le miz you
Speaker 4: did only in London? Yes? Why well? And this because
Speaker 4: I didn't want to do it well. And it's a
Speaker 4: reason that I have questioned my entire career. When I
Speaker 4: was at the Barbicane rehearsing the Barbicane was then the
Speaker 4: Royal Shakespeare Company's London home, it felt so much like
Speaker 4: being in the hallways of Juilliard. It was amaze the
Speaker 4: rehearsal rooms. I just felt like I was at Juilliard.
Speaker 4: And Trevor actually said to me, if anybody belongs in
Speaker 4: this production or with the Royal Shakespeare Company, it's you, Patty.
Speaker 4: Because Michelle Sudni was an artistic director of the Royal
Speaker 4: Shakespeare Company. Michelle sun Deny was one of the co
Speaker 4: founders and an artistic director of the Drama division of
Speaker 4: the Juilliard School. So I came full circle two different
Speaker 4: countries but I had come full circle in training.
Speaker 1: Couple of the notices for you when you did le
Speaker 1: Mis in London.
Speaker 4: I don't even remember, but I won an Olivier Award
Speaker 4: for Fontine. So I have no idea. But everybody that
Speaker 4: I know that saw you do it said you were
Speaker 4: breathtaking in that role.
Speaker 1: So there was no desire you had.
Speaker 4: Well, this is what happened. Two weeks after we opened
Speaker 4: at the Barbicane. I came off stage in my barricade
Speaker 4: uniform because I was in the barricade scene, and I went,
Speaker 4: I can't do this in New York. It was an instinct,
Speaker 4: I can't do this in New York. And I went
Speaker 4: to the stage door to drop off a name to
Speaker 4: the stage door man. A Cameron McIntosh, the producer you
Speaker 4: know besides or Sci was standing there and I said, Cameron,
Speaker 4: I can't do this in New York. I was the
Speaker 4: only American in the company. He said, I know, the
Speaker 4: parts too small. I said, no, that's not it. I said,
Speaker 4: this is my company. I realized when I came off
Speaker 4: the stage that I was in the perfect theatrical environment,
Speaker 4: in the perfect play, with the perfect cast, and I
Speaker 4: didn't want anything to touch that memory and I made it.
Speaker 1: It would be different in New York totally.
Speaker 4: It would be a reproduction of this production. And I
Speaker 4: didn't think that I would see And you know, I've
Speaker 4: never known whether I made the right decision or not.
Speaker 1: But what did you do after that?
Speaker 4: LBJ? I came back to do LBJ and.
Speaker 1: We didn't talk about film in your life now because
Speaker 1: in and around all of your historic career in the theater,
Speaker 1: what is going on for you?
Speaker 4: Film one nothing? I wish it did nothing, I mean
Speaker 4: but minor. But I don't know why I don't get
Speaker 4: cast or I don't know why that you know, And
Speaker 4: now it's probably too light because I'm one of those
Speaker 4: women that are too old for Hollywood, or maybe maybe
Speaker 4: I'm coming into my film career now. I don't know
Speaker 4: why it didn't happen, but it didn't. I did driving
Speaker 4: Miss Daisy, and Alfred Duri was responsible for my casting
Speaker 4: in that I did. And that's the best experience you
Speaker 4: had making a film, all of them, working, especially working
Speaker 4: with the Australian directors Bris Beresford and Peter Weirer.
Speaker 1: What did you do with them?
Speaker 4: We did Witness with Peter Weheir and I did Driving Daisy.
Speaker 1: With Do you ever worked with Lamette?
Speaker 4: Very little? I had a tiny, tiny, little part in something.
Speaker 4: I can't remember what it was, but I thought, oh
Speaker 4: my god, I would love to have worked with him.
Speaker 1: Who were the stars.
Speaker 4: I don't remember the whole experience. I was literally I
Speaker 4: had one tiny and I can't remember if it was
Speaker 4: a movie or I can't remember television series. Could have
Speaker 4: been a television series, but I can't remember what about.
Speaker 4: Life goes on for four years and then you know,
Speaker 4: guest spots here and there. But it was It's odd
Speaker 4: that that that I haven't had that opportunity.
Speaker 1: I probably did have that opportunity, but you passed on it. Correct. No,
Speaker 1: I don't think I in the chance to do a
Speaker 1: television series come your way.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 4: I it's interesting. I'm a hard sell, Alec. I've been
Speaker 4: cut at the studio level on auditions in California because
Speaker 4: I didn't believe I was I could do this or that,
Speaker 4: And you know, it's like it's I'm a hard sell
Speaker 4: in California. I'm a hard sell in movies. I'm a
Speaker 4: heart sell in TV. You know, I'm always a hard cell.
Speaker 4: I could tell you a story, right, now, but I can't.
Speaker 4: I've been asked to audition for a musical, and it's
Speaker 4: twenty five years since I've auditioned for a musical. When
Speaker 4: does it stop coming up?
Speaker 1: Patty Lapone talks about the most painful loss of her career,
Speaker 1: her subsequent illness, and how she recovered from both.
Speaker 2: But the time is come.
Speaker 3: Not with the voice as soft as thunder, as they tear.
Speaker 2: Your whole, Bob, as they turn your dream to share,
Speaker 2: he can make your sound heard.
Speaker 3: Say with one law your known.
Speaker 1: This is It's Alec Baldwin and you were listening to
Speaker 1: here's the thing. Patty Lapone originated the role of Norma
Speaker 1: Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard in London. She
Speaker 1: was set to move with the show to Broadway until
Speaker 1: she found out she was being replaced by Glenn Close.
Speaker 1: To say she was devastated is an understatement.
Speaker 4: You know, there's always going to be some kind of
Speaker 4: stuff going on in a musical. That's just the nature
Speaker 4: of a musical. But it was a great company, we
Speaker 4: had a great time. That was the exterior information that
Speaker 4: was coming to me that was very painful. I mean, clearly,
Speaker 4: when I didn't get the reviews Andrew wanted me to get.
Speaker 4: I was on the chopping block, but I didn't find
Speaker 4: that out until after Glenn Close opened in New York
Speaker 4: and Vincent Canby gave her this review against my bad review. Meantime,
Speaker 4: I'm getting standing ovations in London and there's nothing about
Speaker 4: me in the press in London because I show up
Speaker 4: every night. I'm turning in my it's working, yeah, but
Speaker 4: Andrew wanted something else. And the way they got me
Speaker 4: out was the way they were going to get me
Speaker 4: out was to have me quit because of the the
Speaker 4: barrage of negative publicity and my agents and the lawyer
Speaker 4: said stay on stage. And I don't know if it
Speaker 4: was worth it, because it was really painful integration. Months
Speaker 4: before I closed, I got a telephone call from my agent.
Speaker 4: I'm in the dressing room getting ready for the show.
Speaker 4: I called my agent call. He said here, you're sitting down.
Speaker 4: I said yeah. He said, you've been fired. Glenn Close
Speaker 4: was replacing you in New York and he went and
Speaker 4: I got up and had batting practice in my dressing
Speaker 4: room with a you know, a floor lamp, and left.
Speaker 4: They could hear me crying and screaming, and the company
Speaker 4: came up and company manager. I said, I've been fired.
Speaker 4: I said, I'm leaving. I'm going bye. I can't take
Speaker 4: this anymore. And if people say, what would you do
Speaker 4: if you saw Andrew again, I said, it's not what
Speaker 4: I would do, It's what my husband would do. Because
Speaker 4: whatever I had to absorb I then took out on
Speaker 4: my husband when I came home, and that was like
Speaker 4: I went into therapy. I was on prozac. It was
Speaker 4: like it was like a long healing process because I
Speaker 4: had to absorb it and I couldn't. There was no
Speaker 4: place I could release it because I had to perform
Speaker 4: every night and that. But that company was extraordinary and
Speaker 4: we had a great time. We had a great time.
Speaker 1: So after that, you do Sweeney.
Speaker 4: Then the next musical I do is Sweeney with John Doe.
Speaker 4: Oh well, that is two thousand. This is interesting. I
Speaker 4: come home beat up emotionally and also physically. I find
Speaker 4: out through a routine eye examination that I am in
Speaker 4: the middle of detached retinas in both eyes. There's like
Speaker 4: four hundred shots of laser in one eye, two hundred
Speaker 4: and fifty in the other eye. Kevin Anderson gets into
Speaker 4: a life threatening motorcycle accident, and bob Aby and the
Speaker 4: choreographer comes down with a really really severe case of
Speaker 4: I don't know, shingles or something. So three of us
Speaker 4: are manifesting illness at the end of this experience, which
Speaker 4: was so bad. So I take time to heal and
Speaker 4: I do a movie. I do bits and pieces. But
Speaker 4: the next big thing that comes comes on the heels
Speaker 4: of breast cancer. They say, do you want to play
Speaker 4: Nellie love It in Sweeney Todd with the New York
Speaker 4: philm brintervill playing I went first thing, I said to
Speaker 4: Steve now, because I've never been cast an Assantai musical.
Speaker 4: They said, yes, it gives the proval. I said, of
Speaker 4: course I do. But this is a year earlier. Within
Speaker 4: that year, I find out that I have breast cancer.
Speaker 4: And what happens is I deal with it. There's nothing
Speaker 4: else I can do but deal with it and go
Speaker 4: through radiation. On my last day of radiation, start rehearsal
Speaker 4: for Sweeney Todd or the New.
Speaker 1: York Fill And it's that one for the Fill.
Speaker 4: Yes, the quintessential New York moment. The New York Philharmonic
Speaker 4: on a New York stage in a New Yorker's production,
Speaker 4: and that was an unbelievable experience.
Speaker 2: Here are hot from the oven. What is that it's priest,
Speaker 2: have a little priest? Is it really good? That it's
Speaker 2: too good? At least?
Speaker 4: Then again they don't comment since all the flesh, so
Speaker 4: that what's pretty fresh.
Speaker 1: Now let's talk about Mammo's last place. So here you're
Speaker 1: last venture in New York? Is you with your old buddy?
Speaker 1: So he calls you. He's got the play and he
Speaker 1: called you.
Speaker 4: I called him. I saw November, and I saw after
Speaker 4: the play. I saw his wife, Rebecca Pigeon. I said, Rebecca,
Speaker 4: I'm hitting David up for a play. It's too long.
Speaker 4: It's too long that we've worked together. And I wrote
Speaker 4: him a letter and I said, I don't want a
Speaker 4: relationship to end with the old neighborhood. I said, let's
Speaker 4: do something. And then he called me and he said,
Speaker 4: do you know who Kathy Boudin is? And I did,
Speaker 4: but I didn't. And then he started to tell me
Speaker 4: about he was right. He was thinking about writing a
Speaker 4: play about the weatherman or the or an anarchist. And
Speaker 4: I went, oh cool. And then then I found out
Speaker 4: this was last year. And then I found out that
Speaker 4: the play was being done in London, and I went, no, no, no, man,
Speaker 4: I said, I have to play this part. And I
Speaker 4: wrote to him and I said, is this the part
Speaker 4: we were talking about? I said, they don't want me
Speaker 4: in London because they don't want me in London, But
Speaker 4: can I do it in New York? And he called me.
Speaker 4: I said, scure, London, Let's do it now. So that's
Speaker 4: how that happened. I knew it was a risk, but
Speaker 4: that you know, I always take a risk with David
Speaker 4: and I.
Speaker 1: You've been directed by David before a lot more often
Speaker 1: than you're comfortable with him in both very aspects. And
Speaker 1: we talked about because I came and saw you that
Speaker 1: last performance, and we talked about how the financing and
Speaker 1: the financiers themselves have changed a lot, which is, if
Speaker 1: they don't get those results very very quickly, they jump,
Speaker 1: they put the parachute.
Speaker 4: This is a risky play. And you know what Broadway
Speaker 4: should be, what Broadway is supposed to be, which is
Speaker 4: a vehicle for every idea. And I also am frustrated
Speaker 4: with the producers that have made gobs of money. They
Speaker 4: should have a levy tax, a tax levied against them.
Speaker 4: They should open a black box theater. They should support
Speaker 4: all the new playwrights and composers. There should be a
Speaker 4: great deal of support. Art is the soul of a nation,
Speaker 4: and our art is not being supported before they developed. Yes,
Speaker 4: and it's very, very very depressing. It's very depressing. If
Speaker 4: I go back on the stage in New York, I'm
Speaker 4: going to find out who the producers are and who
Speaker 4: their partners are, and I'm going to sit down and
Speaker 4: talk to them, and I want to find out what
Speaker 4: their marketing campaign is.
Speaker 1: What their marketing You know, I need some answers going in.
Speaker 4: Yes, you definitely, And I want to pay and play,
Speaker 4: which you don't have pair play on Broadway. You don't
Speaker 4: have that. But you know they don't think we take
Speaker 4: the risk with them. We most certainly do.
Speaker 1: Actually, well, we book out the payer play concepts and films.
Speaker 1: Is important because we book out and sometimes you got
Speaker 1: to take a deeper I think, go, maybe I shouldn't
Speaker 1: care so much.
Speaker 4: I don't know whether that's true, Alec, you would it
Speaker 4: would reflect in your performance, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: I think that you can see when people care and
Speaker 4: when you an audience. This can see when they don't.
Speaker 1: Care, because you see, because you seem like someone in
Speaker 1: the years I've bumped into you, run into you, known you,
Speaker 1: known you better, you seem to care the exact same
Speaker 1: amount as you used to.
Speaker 4: I love what I do, and I love the audience,
Speaker 4: and I love the fact that I get to do it,
Speaker 4: and I love I love our craft very very much,
Speaker 4: and it's it's a noble craft. We have a responsibility
Speaker 4: to it and to the audience, and to the playwright
Speaker 4: and to the message. I won't ever care less if
Speaker 4: the scar.
Speaker 2: Should fall into the scene and the storm, it all.
Speaker 5: To me.
Speaker 2: That we have lonely, I will say.
Speaker 4: To Lone.
Speaker 1: Next month, Patty Lapone will go on a national tour
Speaker 1: with her concert entitled Faraway Places This is Him to
Speaker 1: Love from the CD of the same name. Her book,
Speaker 1: Patty Lapone, a Memoir, is now available both in hardcover
Speaker 1: and as an ebook. So the last thing I want
Speaker 1: to say to you is a comment and a question
Speaker 1: embedded in a comment. And that is, and I want
Speaker 1: to say this as carefully as I can, is that
Speaker 1: I want to get myself in trouble here on public
Speaker 1: radio watching you perform, Patty sometimes it's like having sex
Speaker 1: with you, and it's a good section.
Speaker 4: It's like sex.
Speaker 1: When you do what you do, it's like and when
Speaker 1: you're done, I almost get this feeling like you're looking
Speaker 1: at me personally, look at me, going, you really enjoyed
Speaker 1: that day? That was good for you, wasn't it. Do
Speaker 1: you realize My question is do you realize the effect
Speaker 1: you have on people?
Speaker 5: Do you know?
Speaker 4: Well, when you come out there, can you feel how
Speaker 4: much they're digging what you do?
Speaker 1: You must be able to feel it.
Speaker 4: Well, I don't know. If I don't go out there
Speaker 4: going they're going to dig me. I go out there,
Speaker 4: and I do know that the people that have come
Speaker 4: to see me know that I have them in mind
Speaker 4: and that they I already have them on my side.
Speaker 4: They know that I'm doing it for them. They it
Speaker 4: just it could be a persona could be a body
Speaker 4: language thing, but they know that I know they're there.
Speaker 4: And the differences when actors don't acknowledge the audience, the
Speaker 4: audience can't come. When an actor acknowledges the audience, then
Speaker 4: you can have a moment of ecstasy