Two-time Tony Award winner Patti LuPone is bringing Broadway to UC Davis for her May 30 show: Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda.
The songs in this one-woman show are from musicals “in which she could have played, should have played, did play and will play,” according to her publicity material.
The show list includes Hair; Bye, Bye Birdie; Funny Girl; West Side Story; Anything Goes; and Peter Pan — and, of course, Evita and Gypsy.
LuPone recently ended a run of nearly a year as Mama Rose in a Broadway revival of Gypsy, receiving the 2008 Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards for best actress in a musical, and the Drama League Award for distinguished performance. Her performance in Evita brought her the 1980 Tony as best actress in a musical.
Her most recent CD is Patti LuPone at les Mouches, a digitally remastered recording of tapes of her now-legendary nightclub act, which she performed while starring in Evita.
LuPone debuted Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1999, and three years later she presented the show a second time at Carnegie, in a sold-out encore.
Nelson Pressley, in a review in The Washington Post, wrote: “You don’t want to miss it when Patti LuPone throws a party, which is essentially what she did with her concert Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda, less a consideration of what LuPone coulda been than a celebration of the singular stage force she is.”
Another reviewer, Hedy Weiss of the Chicago Sun-Times, wrote: “Patti LuPone can belt ’em out like nobody since Ethel Merman. And, when she sets her mind to it, she also can (and does) do a great deal more.”
She has two other one-woman shows: Matters of the Heart and The Lady With the Torch. She also tours in a new concert with her Evita co-star Mandy Patinkin.
LuPone’s singing has graced PBS television in An Evening With Patti LuPone, Great Performances and Evening at the Pops.
She has acted in TV movies, and in comedy and drama series, and she starred in the ABC series Life Goes On.
AT A GLANCE
WHO: Patti LuPone, with piano accompaniment
WHAT: Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda, one-woman show, in honor of Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef and his wife, Rosalie. Open to the public.
WHEN: 8 p.m. May 30
WHERE: Jackson Hall, Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts
ADMISSION:
Regular $35, $55, $65
Faculty and staff $31, $49, $58
Children and students* $17.50, $27.50, $32.50
2008-09 season ticket holders save 15 percent.
Tickets go on sale to the general public on March 24.
*STUDENTS: Event planners want all interested UC Davis students to be able to attend, so the most they will be asked to pay is $1 (as a handling fee). With this “pay-what-you-can” arrangement, event sponsors will cover the rest of the ticket cost. If students are able to pay more, all but $1 of what they pay will go into the new Larry N. Vanderhoef Scholarship Fund for Students and Staff. Students must go to the box office for “pay-what-you-can” tickets.
BOX OFFICE: (530) 754-2787 or (866) 754-2787, or www.mondaviarts.org.
Media Resources
Dave Jones, Dateline, 530-752-6556, dljones@ucdavis.edu