Patti LuPone has nothing to hit but the heights

Patti LuPone has been known as a first-rate belter ever since she encouraged the peasants of Argentina not to cry for her. She can "sell" a song in the upper register with a Broadway bluster that rivals even the great Ethel Merman, the brassy icon from back in an era when Broadway really had stars (its own stars - not imported movie stars).

LuPone's Sunday booking by the Virginia Arts Festival, up close and personal in a cabaret style, is a happening of the first order. She's won the Tony twice (for "Evita" and "Gypsy") and was the first American to win London's Olivier Award as a musical actress.

It wasn't always so.

As a member of the very first Acting Company, a nationally touring repertory theater troupe founded and taught by the legendary John Houseman, she was trained as a classical actress, appearing in things such as "The School for Scandal," "Love's Labour's Lost" and "Edward II."

I'll never forget the night Houseman sat right behind me at a performance of "Anything Goes" on Broadway. The lively musical starred his former pupil, LuPone. Houseman, you should remember, was the haughty, formidable drama teacher who was famous for those Smith Barney commercials in which he intoned: "We make money the old-fashioned way. We earn it." He won an Oscar for playing a similarly haughty and formidable law professor in "The Paper Chase."

Following the final curtain call, with the audience screaming the praises of LuPone, I couldn't resist asking Houseman if he was going backstage to congratulate his former student. "Surely, surely," he replied in that deep, throaty and oh-so-grand manner, "but I am somewhat disillusioned. I hardly expected Miss LuPone would end up as a tap dancer."

This was the same man who once gave Robin Williams, another of his students, a dime and asked him to telephone his father and tell him that "it is highly doubtful that you will become an actor" (borrowing from a similar scene he played in "The Paper Chase").

After Lupone performed recently as Mama Rose "Gypsy" on Broadway, I tried to interview her, thinking I might recount the story about Houseman, but was told she needed to rest her voice.

There's no doubt, though, that she'll be at full force Sunday at the Williamsburg Lodge with a program she calls "Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda." When she did the same program at Carnegie Hall, it was a triumph. Included will be songs from "Hair," "West Side Story," "Peter Pan," "Bye Bye Birdie" and "Funny Girl" - a Broadway smorgasbord.

I remember another LuPone moment, but it was more touchy than triumphant. This was after the press screening of the TV movie "LBJ: The Early Years" (1987) in which LuPone played Lady Bird Johnson opposite Randy Quaid (no singing there). A New Jersey critic approached the actress and said, "You don't have a thing to worry about, Patti. You are Lady Bird Johnson. You've got the nose for it. You look just like her."

LuPone was not amused. "I went through hours of makeup every day," she replied.

There was, too, the next-to-the-last performance of "Gypsy" a few months ago, when she stopped the show and refused to continue until a man flashing his camera was removed from the theater.

She has been a great champion against microphones and other artificial devices in the theater. (She doesn't need them.) In an Internet message, she said, "I'm glad people even show up, because God knows theater is a dying art form. I guess I'm glad they're all comfortable, sleeping, eating and drinking, but these things they should be doing at home or in a restaurant, not in the theater."

After creating the role of Fantine in "Les Miserables" in London, she created the role of Norma Desmond in the musical "Sunset Boulevard." When her contract to repeat the role on Broadway wasn't honored, she surprised everyone by filing suit against composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. As usual, she won.

Mal Vincent, (757) 437-0029, mal.vincent@pilotonline.com