Tony-winner Patti LuPone bringing Broadway tunes to Edmonds

Go see Broadway superstar Patti LuPone on Thursday at Edmonds Center for the Arts, but leave your cellphone in your purse or pocket.

Perhaps you read this past summer about LuPone’s encounter at Lincoln Center in Manhattan with an audience member who would not stop texting on her phone. During the play.

Without breaking character, LuPone stepped off the stage during a performance of the comedy “Shows For Days” and deftly took the phone from the woman’s lap.

This and a few other infamous incidents in theaters during the past year — the guy who tried to charge his cell phone in a fake outlet on a piece of scenery and the intoxicated woman who walked onto a stage looking for the restroom — have brought to the fore the subject of cellphone etiquette at the theater.

LuPone’s advice?

Turn ’em off.

“I could see this woman from backstage. Her seat was not cheap. There she was in full light in the second row, texting from the very top of the show,” said LuPone during a phone interview earlier this month. “I make my entrance and she still has not stopped. She doesn’t even look at the stage.”

The woman’s texting habit became distracting to the rest of the actors and other people in the audience, LuPone said.

“So in the first scene of the second act, I have a little speech near the audience. I move over to the corner where she is seated. I touch her arm and slip the phone from her hand. It was wild.”

LuPone gave the cell phone to a stage hand, who then gave it back to the woman after the show.

Why is this happening? Are people just too used to watching stuff on screens?

“It’s just a handful of people who are so self-centered that they destroy the theater experience for others. They don’t silence the ring or they are addicted to their phones,” she said. “Next time I might walk off the stage and never come back. Actors are not paid to be the cops of the audience.

“The real question is, why would anyone thoughtlessly miss the magic of live theater?”

LuPone, a two-time Tony award winner, brings that magic to Edmonds with her new show, the comedic and touching “Don’t Monkey With Broadway.”

Her touring show, formerly titled “Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda … played that part,” has been updated with other show tunes from LuPone’s Broadway repertoire, which includes songs by Rodgers &Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Weber, Cole Porter, Stephen Schwartz, Rodgers &Hart, Irving Berlin and Leonard Bernstein.

“Musical theater, start to finish,” she said. “One of America’s great original art forms.”

Joining LuPone for a handful of numbers will be Captain Smartypants and Sensible Shoes, as well as other members of the Seattle Men’s Chorus and the Seattle Women’s Chorus. The show is directed by Scott Whitman. Joseph Thalken is the musical director.

LuPone was in the first graduating class of Juilliard’s drama department in New York, where she was a student from 1968 to 1972.

“It was crazy. The teachers were working New York actors and we were vulnerable kids,” she said. “I was in tears more often than not, but it was an incredible experience and I earned a BFA.”

Her career took off immediately — Broadway musicals, plays, film, TV, touring shows.

She won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her role as Eva Peron (the wife of Argentina’s dictator Juan Peron) in the 1979 original Broadway production of “Evita.” She played Fantine in the original London cast of “Les Miserables.” She was Reno Sweeney in “Anything Goes” and Moll in “The Cradle Will Rock.” Her second Tony Award-winning role was as Mama Rose in the 2007 revival of “Gypsy.”

“The role of Eva Peron was really tough,” LuPone said. “The show was controversial, I was trying to connect the dots with the audience and the score was near impossible. But I muscled through each night. While my portrayal is an audience favorite, I would not want to go through that again. Theater should be joyful.”

LuPone turns 67 the day she sings in Edmonds.

“Sure, I would like to be home with family and friends,” she said with a laugh. “But I am not going to say no to singing with joy.”

Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427; gfiege@heraldnet.com.

See Patti LuPone

Tony-winning musical theater icon Patti LuPone takes the stage for an evening of Broadway favorites at 7:30 p.m. April 21, Edmonds Center for the Arts, 410 Fourth Ave. N., Edmonds. Tickets start at $69. Call 425-275-9595.