Patti LuPone Tactfully Silences Rowdy Audience Member at 54 Below Performance

By: Apr. 10, 2015
Enter Your Email to Unlock This Article

Plus, get the best of BroadwayWorld delivered to your inbox, and unlimited access to our editorial content across the globe.




Existing user? Just click login.

The New York Post's Page Six reports that Broadway legend Patti LuPone was not afraid to call out a rude audience member during her recent performance at New York's 54 Below.

According to the paper, after an audience member continued to ignore persistent requests from those around her to quiet down, LuPone took matters into her own hands, asking the chatty woman, "What is it, honey? Are you drunk? Are you menopausal?"

After the rowdy woman explained that it was her birthday, the Tony winner led the audience in a rousing rendition of "Happy Birthday", but then ended the tune by demanding, "Now shut up!" You go Patti!

The two-time Tony Award winner returned to 54 Below with her critically-acclaimed show The Lady with A Torch. LuPone performs an eclectic collection of torch songs by such composers and lyricists as Arthur Schwartz, Howard Dietz, Jule Styne,Sammy Cahn, Billy Barnes, Harold Arlen, George and Ira Gershwin, and Cole Porter. Enjoy what Don Heckman of The Los Angeles Times described as "a beautifully paced, marvelously delivered torch-song exploration of the pleasures and pains of love; LuPone's remarkable, larger-than-life qualities and stunning musicality are distilled into the pure essence of her art."

'The Lady with the Torch' will run April 1-14, 2015. For additional information, visit: http://54below.com.

LuPone's most recent Broadway appearances include David Mamet's The Anarchist and the new musicalWomen on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, for which she was nominated for Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards. Winner of the Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Actress in a Musical and the Drama League Award for Outstanding Performance of the Season for her performance asMadame Rose in the most recent Broadway production of Gypsy, LuPone's other stage credits include her debut with the Los Angeles Opera in Weill-Brecht's Mahagonny, the world premiere of Jake Heggie's opera To Hell and Back with San Francisco's Baroque Philharmonia Orchestra, the title role in Marc Blitzstein's Regina, a musical version of Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes at the Kennedy Center, Fosca in a concert version of Passion, which was also broadcast on PBS' Live From Lincoln Center, a multi-city tour of her theatrical concert Matters of the Heart, the City Center Encores! production of Can-Can, theNew York Philharmonic's productions of Candide andSweeney Todd (NY Phil debut) and performances on Broadway in Michael Frayn's Noises Off, David Mamet's The Old Neighborhood, Terrence McNally's Master Class and in her own concert Patti LuPone On Broadway.

Photo Credit: Jennifer Broski



Videos