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Before Patti LuPone took a star turn
as the
titular Rose in Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim’s
Gypsy
at
Ravinia in 2006, a series of performances that directly led to
a Broadway revival two years later that earned LuPone her
second career Tony as a leading actress, she first alighted to
the festival’s stage still earlier even than the series of Sondheim
musicals that regularly featured her at Ravinia from 2001 on.
LuPone spent nearly a month in residence at Ravinia in 1975
as a member of John Houseman’s The Acting Company for
performances of
The Robber Bridegroom
,
Edward II
, and
Arms
and the Man
, and then she returned for two weeks in June 1983
with an all–Acting Company alumni cast for Marc Blitzstein’s
The Cradle Will Rock
, appearing in the leading role of Moll.
In a bit of retro-synchronicity, two years later this production
moved to London, where she won an Olivier Award for
her performance. [A 1939 Harvard production of
Cradle
was the catalyst for Leonard Bernstein’s lifelong friendship
with Blitzstein—Bernstein championed many of his works,
including an orchestral version of
Cradle
, and dedicated the
opera
Trouble in Tahiti
to Blitzstein, who became the godfather
of his eldest daughter, Jamie, and dedicated
Six Elizabethan
Songs
to Bernstein.]
May 31 – June 12, 1983
35 YEARS AGO
ON THIS DATE
JUNE 1 – JUNE 17, 2018 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE
27