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My Marriage and Patti LuPone

 A same-sex marriage means that you're going to talk about Patti LuPone.


In my view, both Patti and Audra have been disingenuous. It was disingenuous for Patti to pretend she had handled the "Hell's Kitchen" issue in a professional way. The moment you take your complaint to the ticket-buying public--"That show is just too loud"--you are crossing a line. (It seems to me that if Patti had spoken only with the HK producers, she might have avoided her mess.) But--also--Audra's saying, "If there's a rift between us, I don't know about it" seems like nonsense. If you side with your friend's antagonist in a very public dispute, then you are straying into "rift" territory. Even if nothing happened ten or eleven years ago, Audra's 2024 "emojis" were clearly, emphatically a negative comment on Patti LuPone. They were "rift-making." Come on; admit it, Audra McDonald.

My husband points out that, despite all of the over-the-top hand-wringing, there are "no First Amendment issues" here. People are allowed to make regrettable comments, and other people are allowed to suggest melodramatic protests (even when people seem to be just a bit misguided).

Patti rears her head even when my spouse and I seem not to be discussing her. I observe that Audra has a shot at the Tony simply because "Gypsy" is a better literary work than "Sunset Boulevard"; good writing means a great deal (and possibly more than the performance in question). When "Into the Woods" went up against "Phantom," it was Joanna Gleason who won the Tony Award. Sarah Brightman wasn't even nominated.

My spouse asks about other nominees that year--and it occurs to me that the actual Best Actress did not take home the trophy. The actual Best Actress was Patti LuPone (in "Anything Goes").

I'm relieved that the country now seems to be moving on.
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