Patti & Mandy

My parents were of a certain generation that grew up loving musical theater. They were also of a certain generation that adored the folk music revival of the nineteen-fifties and nineteen-sixties, but only half of their musical influence stuck. I grew up with the cast albums of My Fair Lady and Hello, Dolly! and their LP grooves seem permanently pressed into my brain. Because they taught history, my parents were special fans of 1776, another musical I know from top to bottom, though I can't especially claim to enjoy it. My father bought the original concept recording of Jesus Christ Superstar when it came out, while my mom was more of a Hair fan.

The only musical which they both agreed they couldn't stomach was West Side Story. Apparently they both heard a little too much of it during their teen years.

The first musical recording for which I paid money from my own allowance—the first musical that was ‘mine’—was Evita. In my teen years I’d been bitten by the community theater bug. In those archaic, quaint pre-internet days, however, there really wasn’t much of way for a kid stuck in a tiny southern town to remain au courant with the Broadway scene. The best I could do was to pore over the theater-related books that appeared on the shelves of the Richmond Public Library, and dream. I ran across Evita first in The Best Plays of 1979-1980, I think it was, part of a series that gave synopses and occasional passages of dialogue from a dozen of the previous year’s best plays and musical, sprinkled liberally with photos and Al Hirschfeld line drawings.

I loved those books. I’d pore over every detail they contained, memorizing the cast lists, counting the Ninas, wondering what in the hell the songs might sound like from the musicals. The Evita photos intrigued me especially. Mandy Patinkin struck me as angry and handsome as Che, and Patti Lupone looked like a steely flint with a blond wig as Eva Peron. Then it kind of struck me, the third or fourth time I checked the book out of the library, that I could probably find out what the score actually sounded like if I bought a copy. So I made a special Saturday bus trip out to Peaches Records one day—a special excursion indeed, because a trip to Peaches was exotic and something I anticipated as highly as I might a trip to Disney World—and plunked down the cash for the double-LP American premiere recording of Evita. I couldn’t wait to get home to look at it, so on the bus ride home I ripped off the shrink wrap and started devouring the lyrics.

I really loved that show. I listened to it so many times in my youth that I could sing the whole thing, from start to finish, every part.

To this day you can drop the needle anywhere on any one of those four grooves (and yes, I know no one listens to LPs any more, but indulge me) and after about two notes I’ll pick up singing “I don’t really think I need the reasons why I won’t succeed—I haven’t started! Let’s get this show on the road, let’s make it obvious Peron is off and rolling!” Someone will introduce someone else to me with Vance, this is Mark Schaumberg, and my brain will irreverently (and irrelevantly) supply, “Who has the distinction of being the first man to be of use! To EVA DUARRRRRTE!” I will hear a strain of “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” and my arms will involuntarily lift into the air. It’s that automatic.

Which is why I was kind of insistent that Craig and I go to see An Evening with Patti Lupone and Mandy Patinkin, a couple of weeks ago. We’d seen Patti Lupone in concert twice before, but I found the opportunity to see the two together way too irresistible.

And it was a good concert—an evening in which the pair of them occupied a stage containing only a pair of chairs and a bunch of multi-colored ghost lights, performing the heck out of a bunch of songs that appeal to them. There are extended segments from South Pacific and Merrily We Roll Along and Carousel. If the notion of the pair pretending to be Rodgers and Hammerstein youths a good forty years their junior is a little jarring at first, their acting chops really make the songs stick. Sure, Carousel was a bit of a downer on which to end the show, but the pair were comfortable together and sounded great.
Our seats were in the third row, close enough to be spat upon by both singers (but especially Patti). During the intermission, a rotund couple decided to abandon their balcony seating and take up the two empty seats in front of us. The pair wouldn’t shut up. They both had heavy, almost foreign Joisey accents, like they were auditioning to be Baby Snooki’s parents in the Hanna-Barbera Saturday morning cartoon adaptation of Jersey Shore.

I could tell there was going to be trouble when, at the beginning of Lupone’s second-act opener from Gypsy, the singer made her way to our end of the stage, then turned to walk the opposite direction and the woman in front of me yelled out, “No! COME BACK, PATTI!” (Patti was wise enough to beat a hasty retreat.) But then, during “Rose’s Turn,” the woman decided she would sing along and fling out her arms at emotional high points. I personally was hoping that Lupone would get offended, because I read her autobiography and know she calls several people assholes in print, and therefore I was pretty sure that when it came down to someone stealing the spotlight, Patti would cut a bitch.

Instead, the women sitting next to her told her to shut up. “Ex-kuh-yooz me?” asked the woman, loudly.

“Shut up,” repeated the women.

“Ex-KUH-YOOZ ME?!” repeated Mrs. Snooki, huffing and puffing as if she’d never heard of anyone being asked not to sing along with one of the biggest divas of Broadway legend . . . or also with his companion on the stage, Patti Lupone.

Sadly, Patti did not come over and spear the woman through the head with her size three stiletto. After the second round of ex-kuh-yoozing, she shut up and remained icily silent through the rest of the show.

We did see her again outside, after the show. For some mysterious reason, Craig and our friend Jim wanted to hang around the stage door afterward and wait for the pair to emerge. The Joiseyites came out screaming “Patti! Patti!” and planted themselves directly in front of the door until they were moved to the side by security. When Patti came out, they started wailing so loudly that the tiny Lupone at first made a beeline in their direction, saw their stalkerish fervor, and then immediately caromed in the opposite direction to sign autographs, before disappearing into an enormous black SUV.

“Oh my god, what a freak,” commented a cute Asian-American girl who’d been trying to get her poster autographed. She told us that she’d been sitting in the second balcony during the show and that she’d seen the woman trying to sing along with Patti at the start of the first act. Then she commiserated with us when we told her the woman had been sitting immediately in front of us.

I still say Patti should cut a bitch.