Our favorite Patti LuPone theatre roles
The three-time Tony Award-winning actress, a living Broadway legend, returns to the stage in fall 2024 opposite Mia Farrow in the comedy play The Roommate.
She’s a three-time Tony Award winner who moves seamlessly between plays and musicals and always speaks her mind — often to tell you to turn off your phone in the theatre. She’s Patti LuPone, and she’s back on Broadway opposite Mia Farrow in The Roommate, a comedy about two women sharing a residence as well as life’s twists and turns.
Across 50-plus years and counting, LuPone has left indelible marks on the theatre. She has also acted in various TV series and films over the years, including Pose, Penny Dreadful, American Horror Story, Life Goes On, Driving Miss Daisy, Witness, and Frasier, earning a 1998 Emmy nomination for her guest appearance. Also on her trophy shelf: two Grammys for a recording of Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at the Los Angeles Opera.
As LuPone readies for The Roommate, learn more about the most noteworthy stage credits from her nearly 40-show history on Broadway and beyond. Then get tickets so you can be housemates — temporarily, anyway — with her at the Booth Theatre. Plus, and be sure to check out our roundup of Mia Farrow's theatre roles.
Get The Roommate tickets now.
The Lower Depths
Maxim Gorky’s 1902 drama portrays struggles of down-and-out Russians in a shelter. In this 1972 staging that marked LuPone's Off-Broadway debut, the actress played Natasha, the shelter owner's sister who becomes romantically involved with a thief, played by Kevin Kline.
Three Sisters
A year after her Off-Broadway debut production, which was presented by the Acting Company, LuPone made her Broadway debut with the same troupe as the idealistic Irina in Anton Chekhov’s classic drama. She reprised the role two years later.
The Robber Bridegroom
Sing out, LuPone! The actress earned her first Tony Award nomination for her featured role in this 1975 musical by Alfred Uhry (book and lyrics) and Robert Waldman (music) based on Eudora Welty’s novel. As Rosamund, she gets entangled with the roguish Jamie Lockhart (Kline again), the titular robber bridegroom. Her song “Sleepy Man” would be a taste of her showstopping vocal performances to come.
The Water Engine/Mr. Happiness
In this David Mamet double bill on Broadway in 1978, an inventor creates a revolutionary device that leads to conflicts. For LuPone, who played the innovator’s sister, it set the stage for a long collaboration with the playwright. She’d later appear in Mamet's Edmond, The Woods, The Old Neighborhood, and The Anarchist.
Evita
LuPone’s superstar-making role and first Tony Award win came in this musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice directed by Harold Prince. Seen first on Broadway in 1979, it charts the rise of Eva Perón, the wife of Argentine dictator Juan Perón. Following this show, LuPone, like her character, was “high-flying, adored.”
Oliver!
“I’d Do Anything” and “As Long as He Needs Me” were two big numbers for LuPone as the doomed Nancy in this 1978 revival of Lionel Bart’s musical adaptation of Dickens’s Oliver Twist. Unfortunately, the production ran just 17 performances.
The Cradle Will Rock
Marc Blitzstein’s 1937 musical set during the Great Depression critiques corruption and corporate greed through the story of a union organizing drive in Steeltown, USA. Moll (LuPone) is a down-and-out prostitute who becomes a symbol of the oppressed working class. She played the role off Broadway 1983 and a couple years later in London, where she won an Olivier Award.
Les Misérables
She dreamed a dream, and she won an Olivier. In the 1985 London premiere of this musical set during 19th-century France, LuPone originated the role of ill-fated Fantine and won an Olivier for her performance. The show about ex-convict Jean Valjean's quest for redemption went on to become a global phenomenon.
Anything Goes
In 1987, LuPone curled her voice around juicy Cole Porter songs including “I Get a Kick Out of You” and “You’re the Top,” earning a Best Actress Tony nomination. She ably found her sea legs as nightclub singer Reno Sweeney in this revival of a 1934 musical set on an ocean liner awash in mixed-up relationships.
Sunset Boulevard
Like the Billy Wilder movie it’s based on, Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical focuses on fading silent film star Norma Desmond’s obsession with returning to the screen. LuPone headlined the original 1993 London production, earned an Olivier nomination, and was then replaced by Glenn Close in the Broadway version. That led to a highly publicized feud (and to the “Andrew Lloyd Webber Memorial Pool” at LuPone’s home).
Sunset Boulevard returns to Broadway this fall with Nicole Scherzinger as Norma.
Patti LuPone on Broadway
LuPone has made concerts a key part of her busy career – and that includes on Broadway. This 1995 show featured songs she’d help popularize, like “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” from Evita and the high-flying “Meadowlark,” from a regional run of a musical called The Baker’s Wife that never made it to Broadway.
In 2000, she poured out love songs in a Broadway concert called Matters of the Heart, and 11 years later, shared the stage with her Evita co-star in An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin.
Master Class
LuPone knows a great part when she sees one – and she’s willing to take it over. Terrence McNally’s 1995 play was inspired by tutorials operatic diva Maria Callas gave to aspiring opera singers in the early 1970s at Juilliard. LuPone, who graduated Juilliard in 1972, took over the lead role after Zoe Caldwell ended her Tony-winning run.
“Patti LuPone has, as Maria Callas would say, presence. Big presence,” reads a review in Variety.
Noises Off
Don’t you love farce? Michael Frayn’s play spins around a theatre troupe's chaotic production of a comedy. LuPone displayed her comic chops in this 2001 Tony-winning Best Revival. She pulled out the comic chops as Dotty Otley, an aging actress who portrays Mrs. Clackett in the play-within-the-play.
Sweeney Todd
As loony Mrs. Lovett, Patti LuPone, played the tuba alongside Michael Cerveris as the titular Demon Barber in director John Doyle’s 2005 innovative, actors-as-instrumentalists Broadway staging of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s bloody masterwork. LuPone tooted her way to her fourth Tony nomination.
LuPone had previously played Mrs. Lovett in 2001 at the Ravinia Festival in Illinois, where also had other key roles in Sondheim shows: Passion, Anyone Can Whistle, Gypsy, and Sunday in the Park with George.
Gypsy
Everything’s coming up Patti! In the summer of 2007, LuPone tried on the famous role of Mama Rose in a limited Off-Broadway run of the Arthur Laurents, Jule Styne, and Stephen Sondheim musical co-starring Laura Benanti and Boyd Gaines. The character fit her like a glove, as did songs like “Some People” and “Rose’s Turn.”
The three actors all won Tonys when Gypsy moved to Broadway the next year. LuPone famously yelled at an audience member for taking a picture during a performance.
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
David Yazbek and Jeffrey Lane’s 2010 musical adaptation of Pedro Almaldovar’s quirky film didn’t exactly set Broadway on fire – though director Bartlett Sher’s staging included a bed that went up in flames. In her Tony Award-nominated turn as Lucia, an unsteady ex-wife, LuPone captivated with the song “Invisible.” It’s a highlight from the production that ran only 69 performances.
Shows for Days
In Douglas Carter Beane’s 2015 Off-Broadway comedy, LuPone played the charismatic and controlling leader of a community theatre in Reading, Pennsylvania, who influences a young playwright. LuPone famously snatched a cell phone from an audience member texting mid-performance. It was an echo of her Gypsy shout-out.
War Paint
This 2017 Broadway musical created by Doug Wright (I Am My Own Wife; Good Night, Oscar) and Scott Frankel and Michael Korie (Grey Gardens), and directed by Michael Greif (Hell’s Kitchen) depicted the rivalry between cosmetics titans Helena Rubinstein (LuPone) and Elizabeth Arden (Christine Ebersole). Like her co-star, LuPone earned a Tony nomination, her seventh.
Company
Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s 1970 musical is about relationships – and all the complications that come with them. In director Marianne Elliot’s staging of Company, the main character, the unmarried Bobby, is the single lady Bobbie. LuPone played acid-tongued wife Joanne, who gets the plum assignment of serving up the killer showtune “The Ladies Who Lunch.”
In Elliott's 2019 London production, LuPone won an Olivier. On Broadway from 2020-22, a Tony. Everybody rise, indeed.
The Roommate
This two-hander written by Jen Silverman (Spain, Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties) and directed by 2024 Lifetime Achievement Tony Award recipient Jack O’Brien is about life's second acts. The story follows Iowa divorcée Sharon as she takes in a mysterious roomie: Robyn, who’s looking for a fresh start.
LuPone famously left the Actor's Equity union in 2022, suggesting the end of her Broadway days. But The Roommate proves that LuPone's ready for a second act of her own.
Get The Roommate tickets now.
Originally published on