Thursday, July 21, 2011

My Life at the Theater: Anything Goes




Not a huge Patti Lupone fan, but you get the idea from this clip.
I saw Anything Goes at the Stratford, Canada Festival in 2004. Music by Cole Porter; book by P.G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton. New book by Timothy Crouse and John Weidman, what's not to love. A terrific cast and stage production.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Patti Lupone is very talented but I'm not a huge fan either. I can't exactly say why. We have seen her several times, starting with EVITA (not a big favorite of mine) in San Francisco in 1979. Then there was SUNSET BOULEVARD (which I really disliked) in London in 1993.

Better was SWEENEY TODD (though I preferred Angela Lansbury, and the original non-sripped down version) in 2005 and best of all - perhaps the "role she was born to play" - Mama Rose in GYPSY in 2008.

Jeff M.

pattinase (abbott) said...

You never get the feeling she is playing a real person. She can emote and sing but the quiet moments, the real person is always missing. It would make sense she would be best in Mama Rose. I saw Tyne Daily in that part.

C. Margery Kempe said...

I wish more of Wodehouse's plays were collected. There seems to be only one collection of four plays in print.

pattinase (abbott) said...

I don;t think I have ever seen one but I love Alan Bennett plays if that counts.

C. Margery Kempe said...

LOL -- there's a great interview with PGW where he talks about sort of falling into writing musicals. You can't imagine it happening at any other time. Bennett is fantastic -- he has such an ear for characters. All the Beyond the Fringe members accomplished amazing things, but Cook will always be my favourite.

Anonymous said...

Patti, Wodehouse co-wrote "Bill" in SHOW BOAT.

We saw the updated 1996 version of BY JEEVES in London, written by Alan Ayckbourn and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Stephen Pacey played Bertie Wooster and Malcolm Sinclair was Jeeves. I don't remember much about it other than that we enjoyed it.

Jeff M.

Anonymous said...

We also saw Tyne Daly as Mama Rose, as well as Angela Lansbury in London in 1973. She certainly wasn't an obvious choice for the role but she was wonderful as always.

Jeff M.

Ron Scheer said...

Saw this one in NY, back in the day. A story about Patti, maybe true, is that she didn't understand the song "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina." She's supposed to have complained, "Argentina is a country, not a person."...I think Patti was best in that little supporting role she had in WITNESS.