steve's notebook

(Sept. 29, 2010)

And then there was the time Jessye Norman taught Patti about her period.

A full day, last Saturday, of running errands, making blintzes, and listening to the audiobook of Patti LuPone’s memoir, Patti LuPone: a memoir. Yup. These creative types. Despite the titular self-classification, we can’t approach this as we would Joan Didion. The rules are different; this is a Diva Memoir. There’s no point in asking if it’s a great book, because it’s not. It’s also not the point. A Diva Memoir isn’t about the quality of the writing; it’s about building the ultimate stage for that thing we love, hate, and love to hate: Herself. In his ode to the operatic diva, Demented, the egregious Ethan Mordden outlines a set of criteria by which to assess the Diva: Stimme, Kunst, Iconic Moment, Cult, and Emotional Journey. I’m not above a little creative appropriation in order to apply these to the Diva Memoir.

Stimme.

My first instinct here was to look at the authorial voice. How well does it capture the subject? There isn’t much to go on. The content (and certainly a few exclamatory outbursts) is LuPone, but the writing style is LuPone “as told to.” Sadly, that “to” isn’t Patrick Dennis. Aside from the details, the book reads a lot like Donna McKechnie’sTime Steps, even the intimate details taking on the arm’s length pronouncement of a Playbill bio. The ghostwriter shapes the stories into presentability and creates some structure, but his invisibility translates into a sense of sameness across the text. 0/10.

Where we do get LuPone’s voice, however, is in the audiobook. That publisher preview clip was on the robotic side, but she warms up once she gets past the prologue. She provides a liveliness that isn’t necessarily in the text. How can writing “douchebag” match her perfected inflection of those two syllables? What exclamation point gives you full length of “My mother!”? And what’s with these actresses and their animal voices? The writing is still pretty flat, but her vocal texture keeps it lively. 8/10. Average 4/10

Kunst.

The arc of the book’s narrative is a fairly chronological account of LuPone’s performance history, bookended by the opening and closing of Gypsy. The big roles are all there, of course, as well as her training at Julliard. I appreciated the attention paid to the hodgepodge of parts she took on through the early Eighties, a time she makes out to be a post-Evita wander in the desert. No mention at all of Noises Off (perhaps she’s blocked it out after that BC/EFA debacle). I was surprised that she omitted entirelyRegina and Mahagonny. I’m still curious to know her thoughts on transitioning into the environment and vocal demands of operatic works. More broadly, my biggest complaint with the discussion of her work here is that she shies away from discussing her acting qua acting. There are a few surface comments on her conception of Eva and Norma, and she mentions some of Sondheim’s thoughts on Mrs. Lovett, but doesn’t explore her interpretations in depth. There’s an anecdote about her difficulty figuring out the progression of “Rose’s Turn” during Gypsy rehearsals, an inability to integrate the striptease aspect of the number with her perspective on Rose’s mentality in that moment. This was the sort of meaty commentary that would have delved beyond existing interviews and articles. A bit of choreography is changed, the problem’s resolved, but she again stops short of expanding upon the details of this resolution. She can be a very good actress, so I was let down that we weren’t allowed more insight here¹. 3/10

What really qualifies this for a Diva Memoir is the tone with which she discusses The Art of Acting. You can hear the capital letters, a product of Julliard I’m sure. There’s a fun contrast here, which Bob hits upon: constantly stating the highest importance of The Art, while so much of her discussion is an utter fixation on the machinations of the business and personal validation. Who’s first to record the single, avoiding chorus drudgery in Les Miz, whether she’s being paid enough. This amazing lack of self-awareness is what I demand of my Diva and she comes through in spades. 9/10Average 6/10

Cult.

How far does the book per se go in building the cult of Patti? Most of what’s in there has shown up before in interviews. We all know how she couldn’t really sing Eva. About the swimming pool. About Arthur Laurents. However, she does bless us with a few new insane stories. She learns about the effects of menstruation on the vocal cords from Jessye Norman. Despondent during the San Francisco run of Evita, she complains to a dying mouse. Her grandmother maybe killed her grandfather. And she sees ghosts, or at least thinks she saw the ghost of Eva Peron a few times. This woman is nuts! Thank you Long Island!

Also, she now has a memoir. Where’s yours, Bernadette? This is itself a ballsy act. A memorial act, in both the sense of drawing from her memories, and also of establishing a lasting monument to herself, under her own control. The megalomaniac’s dream. And what Diva is not, at least a little, a megalomaniac? Records and our memories may have formed the columns, but now the Diva has situated the contextual foundation of her temple². And isn’t that the real point? Her version is now the one on record.

I’m not sure what other section this could go in, so it’ll fit here. LuPone has clearly decided that at this point in her career she can stop even pretending to play nice. We get to hear about everyone she hated working with. To be fair, she’s also vocal in her praise of Zoe Caldwell, Laura Benanti, Audra McDonald, Michael Cerveris, and George Hearn among others. She’s profuse in her love for Mandy Patinkin. (Generous? Tell that to Toni Collette.) But, oh boy, what a hatchet she can swing. The entire chorus ofAnything Goes. Demolishing Bill Smitrovich, her Life Goes On husband. A bizarre comment about Joanna Gleason looked like the Tin Man at the 1988 Tonys. With the venom she has for her Eve Harrington-esque Evita alternate, it seems less likely that she avoids her name out of courtesy than not being able to utter it. Sorry, Terri Klausner. The worst of it, of course, is directed at Andrew Lloyd Weber for the Sunset Boulevard disaster. (Here’s an example.)

The thing is, though, that it’s all so blunt. A great diva knows how to make her point without being obvious, pay an insult that won’t register until she’s out of the room. LuPone just pisses on people’s shoes. Understand, I don’t want LuPone to be good, or even nice. But it’s so un-subtle. And that makes it less fun. 5/10

Iconic Moment.

She gives us a few: Rose, Eva, and Norma. These are the tent poles holding up the book, and remarkably similar in their presentation. All stories of fighting against personal and professional opposition in a signature role. During Evita, she’s trying to establish herself and fighting her way up to stardom. In Gypsy, she’s resolving battles with Arthur Laurents and overcoming mediocre initial reviews. But Sunset Boulevard wins. This is the most pain. The most opposition. The real reason to write the book. Norma is the only one that gets a mad scene. Her Sunset experience is the apotheosis of the problems she faces elsewhere—fights with the creators, being made to compete with others in the role, unsupportive producers, difficult music, not enough love in the press— the embodiment of the ultimate victimhood. She’s the high priestess facing betrayal, Cassandra and the Trojans, the deposed queen. We get all this and two backups. 10/10Emotional Journey.If the Sunset story didn’t give us enough of it, LuPone spends the book running though spectrum of feeling, from victimized and wounded to persecuted and hated. And then forces a non-story into a bookend about overcoming blacklisting and mediocre reviews to Show Them All. The victimhood begins in childhood! Her first chance to shine is attacked by Fate and the curse of measles. But she shows them yet again! Ad nauseum. This is what the diva memoir wants. 9/10

So, Patti LuPone: A Memoir earns 6.8/10 as a Diva Memoir. But I can’t get over the fact that I’ve now thought about Jessye Norman’s period, so let’s round that up.

7/10! Not too bad!

1. At the same time, I have to wonder about her self-perception. Specifically, she mentions that once she’s settled into a run she can “stop acting,” be more relaxed and present in the role. Quite the contrary, having seen her at both the beginning and ends of a few runs, I find that after a while she becomes less immediate, more mechanical, the presence in the moment dips. She’s still hitting the marks and the emotions, but with less steam. The best performances I’ve seen have been late previews. ↩

2. Maybe. Another part of me says that no matter how much she tries to define the terms on which she will be approached down the road, the primacy of audience memory in writing theatre history makes her own views an aside to whatever the central narrative of her career turns out to be. I don’t learn about Merman by reading her autobiography; I understand Merman by way of retellings of anecdotes of accounts of people who saw her. This is a thought to be explored elsewhere, but at the Sondheim Conversation with Garry Griffin last winter, it occurred to me how similar the transmission of history in the performing arts is to religion. There’s a core set of stories told again and again, starting out orally until someone writes them down. Today’s reading from the Book of Merman. ↩