It may come as a surprise to learn that while Patti LuPone was notching her humongous success as Eva Peron in Broadway's Evita, she was lonely. "It was a difficult role to sing," she says from her Gypsy dressing room, "so I would sing and then shut up. There was no social life at all." And that, in a nutshell, is why she agreed to do her now-legendary 27-week, Saturdays-only nightclub stint at Manhattan's Les Mouches, a recording of which Ghostlight Records has just released on CD as, appropriately enough, Patti LuPone at Les Mouches. It's already getting the kind of chart attention the acclaimed singer-actor has never received theretofore.
Racing around her space backstage at the St. James Theatre, LuPone reports that in 1980, when she was booked for four weeks but kept getting extended, neither she nor anyone else thought about a live recording. Nonetheless, most — if not all — of the evenings were recorded. LuPone threw them in "an archival box," she says, where they sat until about four years ago, when "I shudder to say I tossed most of those tapes. You get to the point where you think, 'I'm never going to listen to them again.'"
Lucky for her — and now for fans — accompanist-arranger David Lewis, who constructed the act for LuPone, held on to them. As a matter of fact, he revisited them scrupulously when idea man Ben Rimalower suggested that Leslie Kritzer portray LuPone in a re-creation of the act. After that lauded turn, LuPone — who okayed the impersonation — decided she should do something with the recordings herself. Lewis agreed that "it should be Patti LuPone as Patti LuPone at Les Mouches."
So he handed the tapes to Ghostlight head Kurt Deutsch, who worked from 20 of them, at first compiling a rough version of the performance, which he showed to LuPone for approval. Then he digitally refined it, producing a disc of unusual immediacy, impact, and excitement. Asked how LuPone feels about the final product, he says that — not uncommon for an artist — "she doesn't really know what to make of it." He, however, does. Declaring that he's interested in what he records as much for its historical value as anything else, Deutsch says, "This is that forgotten gem that has now turned up. It's another piece of the puzzle of a person's career."
LuPone can get more specific. When she first heard the tapes, she says, "I couldn't believe the pace of the show. I thought we must have all been on speed. But David put together such a great show. Although when I'm speaking between songs, I sound like a babbling idiot." Her reference to Lewis' contribution is an acknowledgment that he chose the material. She says he selected every song and wrote every word of the continuity, though Lewis maintains that "there were ad-libs" and that LuPone chose the opener and closer, "Latin From Manhattan" and "Goodnight Sweetheart."
An Inseparable Collaboration
LuPone says Lewis and she were "inseparable" at the time they were collaborating on shaping and executing the act: "There was nothing in my life except for David, Evita, and Les Mouches." She scotches any notion that she had much to do with the act other than to memorize and perform it. "I know I went to his apartment," she recalls, but "I have no recollection of the rehearsal period or having any feelings about what I thought. I was just learning the music because we had a gig. What was shocking was what happened during the course of this show. It sort of became — I don't know — an event. I looked forward to Saturday nights. I never knew what was going to happen, who was going to be there. I knew it was going to be packed. I knew they're renewing us because we're selling tickets."
The voluble and still buzzed-by-it-all Lewis remembers in more detail: "I was stunned how far to the edges she would go in our first meetings and first rehearsals. I wanted to create a character that would be the savior of New York, an intense, over-the-top personality, achingly vulnerable and trying to make sense of what was going on at the time. I dressed her androgynously in a black men's tuxedo. I was unafraid to mix styles — rock, jazz, punk, Broadway — and fit the arrangements to her voice. It was a very personal act for myself. Patti understood it and went completely with it."
What LuPone went with included tunes the audience might have expected to hear, such as "Meadowlark," "Rainbow High," and "Don't Cry for Me Argentina," but also — traveling that broad Lewis-set spectrum — "Love for Sale," "Heaven Is a Disco," "Downtown," "Street of Dreams," "Look to the Rainbow," the Oscar-winning "It Goes Like It Goes," and several more, all delivered in LuPone's often imperial manner, the vowels and consonants sometimes caressed, sometimes practically slapped into life.
So what did the boite-reluctant LuPone learn about the discipline she still applies when intimate rooms are on her schedule? "I didn't learn anything," she says. "I learned about performing on stage, period. I don't know what cabaret is. I just get up on a stage. I learned how to deliver a song without a mask. There was nothing to hide behind."
LuPone never did see Kritzer as LuPone. She says she was too busy elsewhere at the time but adds, "I don't want to go down and see myself on stage. I'm not dead yet." She sure isn't. She sounds alive from her dressing room, and on Patti LuPone at Les Mouches, she sounds as alive as anyone ever has and perhaps ever will.