Lupone Responds to NYT blog on Vegas incident

The New York Times' theater blogger, Dave Itzkoff, wrote up a post yesterday based on Vegas reports the Patti LuPone incident at the Orleans on Sunday night when she halted the show to ask an audience member to stop texting. It was the second similar incident, the first being a more explosive and startling one in January during "Gypsy."

The headline of the June 22 NYT post: "Another Show-Shopping Moment (Not the Good Kind) From Patti LuPone."

Patti was not amused! In a post today, the blogger published LuPone's reaction:

Dear Dave Itzkoff,

Your story about my stopping my concert in Las Vegas on the New York Times ArtsBeat blog was forwarded to me.

I found the tone of your report very snide and feel compelled to write you to ask – what do expect me, or any performer for that matter, to do?

Do we allow our rights to be violated (photography, filming and audio taping of performances is illegal) or tolerate rudeness by members of the audience who feel they have the right to sit in a dark theater, texting or checking their e-mail while the light from their screens distract both performers and the audience alike? Or, should I stand up for my rights as a performer as well as the audiences I perform for?

And do you think I’m alone in this? Ask any performer on Broadway right now about their level of frustration with this issue. Ask the actor in “Hair” who recently grabbed a camera out of an audience member’s hand and threw it across the stage. Or ask the two Queens in “Mary Stuart” (Harriet Walter and Janet McTeer) how they react to it.

I find it telling that my story elicited 47 comments from your readers while a few other stories on the blog elicited a handful, with many getting 0 comments. It certainly touched a chord with people, almost all of whom sounded like audience members, who share in my frustration with what threatens to become standard behavior if no one speaks out and takes action against it.

This has been going on in my career for 30 years since I starred in “Evita,” and, you’re surprised I stop shows now?

Sincerely, Patti LuPone


Itzkoff then asked the NYTimes.Com readership their view. As I write, Patti is winning the argument 19-1, with many commenters saying they don't even care for her but they agree that audience members have become very rude. (My Las Vegas Weekly column this week addresses the matter further.)

The one commenter who didn't agree so far wrote: "I paid my money, and I’ll do damn well what I please as an audience member. If I want to talk or tape or film, ehtier [sic] out in the open or sereptitiously I will do it."

Well, good luck to this bozo who doesn't care about anyone's rights or pleasures but his own. Not even Itzkoff is arguing that line, he just wondered if a performer mid-performance is the right person to address the problem.

Stomp: The Las Vegas Spectacular?

No matter what else I have to say about Planet Hollywood's "Stomp Out Loud," I have to give it props for having the coolest theater lobby in Vegas. Seriously. Just look at this stuff -- those letters are recycled from old Vegas marquees, that fountain made of a huge roulette wheel. Brilliant. And, by the way, totally free to look around at!

Now, on to the commentary...

By now we're all familiar with this story: A show takes New York or London or some place else by storm and then eventually finds itself a home in Las Vegas. And usually, as long as it's not a traditional Broadway musical, it usually does turn out successfully. Well, it worked for Cirque du Soleil, Blue Man Group and Mamma Mia. Not so well for some others that need not be named.

So here comes another, Stomp. Or, as they redubbed it, Stomp Out Loud. A cast of multiethnic performers, many of them physically unlikely to have become stage actors, make percussion music with a variety of household items. Brooms, water bottles, boxes, garbage cans.

It was impossible not compare Stomp to the Blue Man Group, a show I adore and, for some reason, can watch again and again without boredom. I enjoyed Stomp, just a little less and with no desire to return. And that's strange because intellectually I knew that what I saw in Stomp was more challenging. In BMG, they're backed up by a full band. They have lengthy sections of humor that have nothing to do with music. And they use those blue masks as a means of separating themselves from us normal humans in the audience.

In Stomp, all of the sound comes from a cast of real, uncostumed people on stage, each of whom gets their own character to act out without ever uttering a word. And, most of all, the brilliance of Stomp isn't actually the notion of making the music but the astounding feat of coordinating all of those people -- sometimes 15 at one time -- to make their peculiar noises in a way that is visually appealing and makes sense aurally. As I said, BMG has only three guys to coordinate.

Stomp Out Loud was great fun -- for the first hour. And then, spoiled audience member that I am, I got used to watching incredibly difficult feats and thought, 'What else ya got?'

And here's where it gets a little tricky. My companion for the night, Trevor, had seen Stomp twice before elsewhere. And he tells me this version was more than 60 percent the same as what he'd seen before. And that's a problem for Las Vegas. Just ask the folks at "Phantom: The Las Vegas Spectacular," who wisely realized they'd need to do something truly sensational to make it Vegas-worthy, so they built a $40 million theater and reinvented the chandelier-crash as a thrill ride of sorts.

Stomp had some new things -- live showers on the stage that provide for an intriguing and sexy sequence with some new sounds, a mammoth roulette wheel on the back wall that twirled and lit up -- but is it new enough to make people want to shell out $50 to $110 here?

Maybe. I'll let that question just hang out there. I was wrong four years ago about Mamma Mia, which I didn't think had a chance. And I thought "Avenue Q" would catch on. So all I'll say is that if you've never seen it before, this "Stomp" is worthy. And did I mention that the lobby is really amazing?