Surveying our ecletic arts scene, from the galleries to the stage.
Fort Worth Symphony Gala
7 p.m. Tuesday
Bass Hall, Fort Worth
$30-$99; tickets to the gala dinner are $250. To check availability, call 817-665-6000, ext. 111.
817-665-6000; www.fwsymphony.org
Patti LuPone wanted to be a rock 'n' roll star.
"But," she said in a recent telephone interview, "I had a Broadway voice."
Did she ever. LuPone has a career most rockers can only dream of, having moved from Broadway hits such as Evita to film and television and back to Broadway, where, to many fans, she has come to embody musical theater.
And now, LuPone is bringing some of her best-known material, along with pieces from other Broadway musicals, to Fort Worth in Coulda Shoulda Woulda, part of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra's fundraising gala . A dinner at the Renaissance Worthington Hotel follows the performance.
LuPone will only perform the first half of the show, she said. "You're not getting the Sondheim ..."
Sondheim or not, LuPone seemed pretty pumped about visiting Cowtown for the first time.
"Every time I'm in Dallas I think I'm in Silicon Valley. I wanna see a cowboy," she said. "I will stare and gawk like a fan."
The descendant of renowned 19th-century soprano Adelina Patti, LuPone says her legendary namesake had the better voice.
But the Tony winner is still breaking new professional ground after four decades of show-business success.
In addition to gearing up for an upcoming part in Company, LuPone is also prepping for her first starring ballet role for the New York City Ballet in The Seven Deadly Sins. It won't be a stretch, said LuPone, laughing.
"They're lifting me," she said.
But it would appear that LuPone is still capable of doing most of her own heavy lifting.
Audiences and critics were won over by her performance in the 2008 revival of Gypsy, calling it a role she was born to play.
She also rocked her fans with her 2010 book, Patti LuPone: A Memoir, in which she revisited her Tony-winning turn in Gypsy and trashed Andrew Lloyd Webber for replacing her with Glenn Close in Sunset Boulevard.
But she bought a pool for her Connecticut home with the proceeds of her settlement from the Sunset Boulevard fracas and has proceeded to do swimmingly in her subsequent career.
Though there's not much she hasn't done, the star is open to new ideas. Experiencing the Stockyards, for instance -- whatever the heck that is. And if some cowboy gets rowdy while she's there, so much the better.
"I love the guy who got arrested for driving drunk on his horse in Austin," she said. "Does Billy Bob's stay open late?"
John Austin, 817-390-7874
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