Madrid falls at the feet of Patti LuPone.
It is Monday 15 June in the year 2025 AD. The whole of Madrid is deserted because the Romans are watching Spain’s first match in the World Cup… The whole of Madrid? No! A village populated by die-hard fans is still holding out, as always, against the invaders. And life is not easy for the garrisons of legionnaire fans in cramped camps like the theatres where Patti LuPone performs in Spain. ‘There’s a place for us…’ Bernstein and Sondheim made that perfectly clear back in 1957.
A flair for showmanship and show business runs through Patti LuPone’s veins. Following a brief (and wonderful) introduction in Spanish to the show 'Songs from a Hat', the diva described herself as a Broadway legend. And she does so because she is one.
She recalled all her successes, but also her failures. And she did so in a venue that is legendary amongst musical theatre lovers: the Teatro Nuevo Alcalá, which, when it was known as the Alcalá Palace, was the stage on which Nacho Artime and Jaime Azpilicueta (who was in the audience yesterday) premiered 'Evita' in 1980, with Paloma San Basilio in the role that Patti had premiered a year earlier at the Broadway Theatre in New York.
LuPone made it abundantly clear to us that, as Bernstein and Sondheim so aptly put it in West Side Story, ‘There’s a place for us, somewhere a place for us…’. That place is undoubtedly these concerts on this first Spanish tour by the grand dame of Broadway. Because yes: if the roof of the Teatro Nuevo Alcalá had collapsed yesterday, Madrid would have been left without any queers… Let’s put it very clearly, without beating about the bush.
(Original video source: BroadwayWorld Spain on twitter)
(Text: excerpts from this article on Shangay.com)
