Loose Lips

PLUCKY LADY

Patti LuPone says that the title of her just-released CD, The Lady With the Torch, doesn’t surprise folks who’ve known her for years. “My nickname back at Juilliard was ‘melancholy baby,'” she tells me. “I always say that I was built for torch. I love listening to people like Libby Holman, and I especially love the jazzy 1950s songs that June Christy did, like Something Cool. I’m really proud of the CD, but it’s not about me. The musicians I worked with are incredible, and Jonathan Tunick, who did the orchestrations, is just a genius.”

Originally, LuPone had a much different idea for the CD: “I wanted to do bluegrass, but Scott Wittman [who conceived and directed the shows that led to the album] wanted me to do torch songs, and he won out.” Why bluegrass? “It’s very, very happy music, which I like. And I really love the banjo. When I was about five, my family was cleaning out a closet and they found a banjo and a teddy bear. My older cousin gave me the teddy bear and she took the banjo, which I wanted. I’ve never forgotten that — though I still have the teddy bear!”

Even with the CD finished, the Tony Award-winning star has a full plate. There’s her role of Mrs. Lovett in the Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd, plus a Broadway Cares benefit concert performance of The Lady With the Torch on May 22 at the Vivian Beaumont. And, this August, LuPone will return to the Ravinia Festival in Illinois to play Mama Rose in Gypsy. She reports that It’s not her first-go-round with the classic musical: “I played Louise with the Patio Players in Long Island, and to be honest, I don’t remember Mama. But I’m a little scared; it’s quite a big role and I’m a little concerned about my strength. I’m trying to learn all my lines well in advance, so that part won’t be stressful. And we’ll have some rehearsals in New York with Jack Willis, who’s playing Herbie, and Jessica Boevers, who’s playing Louise. I’m contracted with Sweeney until July, but I’m hoping we’ll renegotiate and I’ll get to stay longer. If that happens, I’m only going to take two weeks off from the show — or maybe three, if I panic.”

Looking farther down the road to February 2007, LuPone will be tackling a major role in Kurt Weill’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at the Los Angeles Opera — a project that will reunite her with her frequent Ravinia co-star Audra McDonald and her Sweeney director, John Doyle. “John’s getting the job was purely by coincidence, although he thought it was my doing,” says LuPone. “For some reason, Tim Robbins backed out, and L.A. Opera offered it to John. I was actually the last person to know; Audra knew, Michael Cerveris knew. It will be my first time doing a Kurt Weill show, which is surprising even to me.”

Meanwhile, she is gearing herself up for “awards season.” Lupone will receive the Distinguished Achievement in Musical Theatre Award at the Drama League Luncheon on May 5, and there are probably plenty of other accolades to come. “I think the whole awards thing is stressful,” she remarks. “Sometimes it’s easier not to get nominated than to get nominated and lose. But you do want that recognition any way you slice it; even if you know if you’re doing your best, you want your peers to recognize your work.”

LUCKY SEVEN ALLEN
Glenn Seven Allen is finally moving front and center, having spent the past year in the ensemble of The Light in the Piazza (although he played the role of Giuseppe in previous productions of the show in Seattle and Chicago). Now he’s starring as Michael Morgan, a recently dead and very unhappy writer, in the York Theater Company’s new musical A Fine and Private Place, based on the novel by Peter S. Beagle.

“At first, I wasn’t attracted to the role because Michael’s in his 30s and I’m not ready to think of myself that way,” Allen says. “But I realized we have a lot of similarities in that we’re both people who tend to define ourselves by our achievements and what other people think rather than who we are. Fortunately, I have a wonderful wife of eight years and two kids who pull me out of my own ambition.”

Another reason Allen was happy to accept the role was the chance to work again with co-star Christiane Noll. “We knew each other briefly when she was starring at Paper Mill in The Student Prince and I was an understudy,” he tells me. “I took her home in my van the first couple of times, but then she stopped coming with me. I think it was because of my driving; I am on the aggressive side. But we always got home first! She’s the most challening actor I’ve ever worked with, and because she sings so well, it makes me bring out the best of my singing ability. All in all, this show has been a great collaborative experience.”

ON THE ROSE

Necessity being the mother of invention is something that Isabel Rose can attest to. It’s why she turned her debut novel The J.A.P. Chronicles, about a diverse group of women, into a one-person, multi-character musical that officially opens next month at the Perry Street Theatre. “I had booked a date at Joe’s Pub to do my jazz nightclub act last year, but my musical director, Jeff Klitz, couldn’t do it because he was working on Lennon,” she explains. “The Joe’s Pub date happened to be the day after the publication of the book, so I started to think of some way to connect the two events, and that’s when I decided to write the musical version of the book. I have a lot of energy, so I decided to turn it into something constructive; as I told my father, who thought I was crazy, it’s better than shooting heroin.”

Rose says that musicalizing her novel was far from easy: “It’s very difficult to condense a 300-page book into an 84-minute show. I had to boil everything down to a clear, cogent plot; a book allows you to have a lot more tangents. But the process allowed me to get the idea of the book across much more clearly, the idea that these characters may each be their own stereotype but they aren’t all different under the surface. Like the rest of us, they’re just trying to get through the day.”

NIXON WINS!
“Last week, I turned 40 and my play closed, so this gives me a little bounce in my step.” Thus joked Cynthia Nixon as she accepted the T. Schreiber Studio’s Outstanding Achievement Award on Thursday. Her co-honoree was Wendy Wasserstein, which was no coincidence: Nixon spoke of being entranced when she first saw the late playwright’s Isn’t It Romantic? She later starred on Broadway in Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles and has recorded her novel Elements of Style, which has just been published posthumously.

At the Schreiber event, the Rabbit Hole star and likely Tony nominee was surrounded by her nearest and dearest, including her mother, Anne Nixon; her daughter, Samantha Emily Mozes; her girlfriend, Christine Marinoni; and such pals and colleagues as actress Jane Alexander, playwright David Lindsay-Abaire, director Emily Mann, and best bud Sarah Jessica Parker, who presented Nixon with the award. Parker, her erstwhile Sex and the City co-star (who preceded Nixon in The Heidi Chronicles), recalled that the two were often up for the same parts when they were child actresses, “and Cynthia usually got them.”
And though Parker commented that “we first worked together 26 and a half years ago,” Nixon later pointed out their first professional collaboration occurred even earlier than that, when they did a recording of Little House on the Prairie.

The event was hosted by the hilarious Julie Halston, who is a T. Schreiber alumnus and teacher, was Nixon’s co-star in The Women, and was one of Wasserstein’s close friends. In attendance were such luminaries as Fran Drescher, who reported that the early rehearsals of Some Girl(s) are going very well; William Finn, who said he’s totally pleased with both the San Francisco and Chicago productions of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee; the wonderful Euan Morton, who performed a song from his new CD NewClear; and the divine Marian Seldes, who confided that her co-star in Terrence McNally’s upcoming play Deuce will be none other than Zoe Caldwell!