RIALTO CHATTER: LuPone and Patinkin Returning to Broadway?

According to a report by Lemonwade, Broadway legends Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin might bring their concert show, which toured the country in 2010-11, to the Great White Way this fall. The show is aiming to open in mid-October and run through the holiday season. Additional details have not yet been released.

Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin are two of Broadway's most venerated performers, having both won a Tony Award® for their performances in Andrew Lloyd Weber's groundbreaking Evita in 1980. Since then they have both starred in film, television, the concert stage and back to Broadway. An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin brings them together again.

The show is choreographed by fellow Broadway veteran and friend, Ann Reinking, who won a Best Choreography Tony Award® for the revival of Chicago. An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin is accompanied on piano by Mandy Patinkin's longtime pianist, Paul Ford.

Patti LuPone recently received rave reviews for her performance as Rose in a new production of the Jules Styne-Stephen Sondheim-Arthur Laurents musical Gypsy, directed by the show's author, Mr. Laurents, at New York's City Center. Last season she made her debut with the Los Angeles Opera in the company's new production of Weill-Brecht's Mahagonny and appeared in the world premiere of Jake Heggie's new opera To Hell and Back with San Francisco's Baroque Philharmonia Orchestra.

Miss LuPone's recent stage credits include Sweeney Todd, the title role in the Marc Blitzstein's Regina, a musical version of Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes at Washington D.C.'s Kennedy Center, a critically acclaimed performance as Fosca in a concert version of Stephen Sondheim's Passion, which was also broadcast on PBS' Live From Lincoln Center and a multi-city tour of her critically acclaimed theatrical concert Matters of the Heart.

After completing her training with the first class of the Drama Division of New York's Juilliard School, she began her career as a founding member of John Houseman's The Acting Company playing a variety of leading roles, both on and off-Broadway and on tour throughout the United States.

Miss LuPone's memorable performances on the New York musical stage include Vera Simpson in the City Center Encores! production of Pal Joey, Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes, (1988 Drama Desk Award, Tony nomination), The Cradle Will Rock, Nancy in Oliver!, Evita (1980 Tony and Drama Desk Awards), Working and Rosamund in The Robber Bridegroon (1976 Tony and Drama Desk Award nominations). In London, she created the role of Fantine in the RSC production of Les Miserables, a role she subsequently played on the West End. For that performance, as well as the reprise of her performance in the London production of The Cradle Will Rock, she won an Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical. Miss LuPone created the role of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (1994 Olivier nomination), and recreated her Broadway performance of Maria Callas in the West End production of Master Class.

Additionally, Miss Lupone has many film and TV credits, including films City By The Sea, David Mamet's Heist and State and Main, Just Looking, Summer of Sam, The 24 Hour Woman, Family Prayers, Driving Miss Daisy, Witness, and TV appearances on NBC's "Will & Grace," "Oz," "Frasier" (1998 Emmy nomination), "Law & Order", "An Evening with Patti LuPone" (PBS).

Mandy Patinkin, in his 1980 Broadway debut, won a Tony Award® for his role as Che in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita and he was nominated in 1984 for his starring role in the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, Sunday in the Park with George. In 1991 he returned to Broadway in the Tony Award®-winning musical The Secret Garden and in 1997 played a sold-out engagement of his one-man concert, Mandy Patinkin in Concert, with all profits benefiting five charitable organizations. Mandy's other solo concerts, Celebrating Sondheim and Mamaloshen have been presented on Broadway, Off-Broadway and have toured the United States.

Mandy won a 1995 Emmy Award for his critically acclaimed performance in the CBS series "Chicago Hope," and he recently starred in the CBS series "Criminal Minds" as FBI profiler Jason Gideon and in the Showtime Original Series "Dead Like Me" as the reaper Rube Sofer. His other television appearances include the role of Kenneth Duberstein in the Showtime film Strange Justice, playing Quasimodo opposite Richard Harris in the TNT film presentation of "The Hunchback," and a film version of Arthur Miller's Broken Glass for BBC/WGBH-Boston.

In 1989, Mandy began his concert career at Joseph Papp's Public Theater. This coincided with the release of his first solo album entitled Mandy Patinkin. Since then he has toured extensively, appearing to sold-out audiences across the United States, Canada, London and Australia, performing songs from writers including Stephen Sondheim, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Irving Berlin, Randy Newman, Adam Guettel and Harry Chapin, among others.

In October 2007, Mandy debuted his newest concert with dear friend Patti LuPone and they begin touring their show An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin beginning March, 2009.