The phrase “ladies who lunch” is as laden with cultural meaning as the Dagwood sandwiches they’re absolutely not eating. Such a woman has a Locust Valley lockjaw and a bichon in her Birkin, and in her fundamental chilly indolence she’s not an obvious fit for Patti LuPone, who has worked practically nonstop in show business since she graduated from Juilliard in 1972 and who brings a particular high-intensity emotional vibrato to every part she plays.
Singing and dancing eight times a week is exhausting, and LuPone—who celebrated her 70th birthday last year with a gala concert at Lincoln Center, as we all should—swore she would never do it again after playing the cosmetics mogul Helena Rubinstein in 2017’s Broadway production of War Paint. Soon thereafter the director Marianne Elliott called to offer LuPone the role of Joanne in a London revival of Stephen Sondheim’s 1970 musical Company.
