Broadway’s Patti LuPone Blasts Etiquette No-No’s

A Word on Good Behavior

There was something most memorable happening while Tony and Grammy Award-winning Broadway mega-star Patti LuPone was appearing at a concert at Caramoor Center for Music and The Arts.

In the middle of her finale, two audience members got up to leave.

Patti abruptly stopped singing and said, “I hope you get to your car in time.” The audience laughed.

A spotlight shined on the couple as they slithered out of the concert tent.

In 2009, LuPone stopped singing mid-performance and yelled at someone in the audience who was taking pictures of her during a performance of the musical Gypsy.

“Stop taking pictures right now!” LuPone screamed at the offender. “You heard the announcement. Who do you think you are?

“Three times! Three times you took a picture!” As she continued on and pointed the photographer out to security, LuPone said, “I won’t continue if they’re taking pictures. Get them out!”

After the perpetrator was escorted out, LuPone said to the audience, “We have forgotten our public manners, and we have forgotten that we are in a community, and this is the theatre, and all of you, every single one of you — except that person — has respect. And I, and the rest of this company, appreciate it.”

Years later, in 2015, LuPone did it again — this time snatching a phone from an audience member who was texting during her performance of Show Days at Lincoln Center.

The woman was in the second row and happened to be in a spot where, when Patti walked out to go off-stage, she could just grab the phone. (Click to see the “Good Morning, America” coverage where Patti shows her moxie.)

“We work hard on stage to create a world that is being totally destroyed by a few, rude, self-absorbed, and inconsiderate audience members who are controlled by their phones,” LuPone said in a statement to Playbill.

“When a phone goes off, or when a LED screen can be seen in the dark, it ruins the experience for everyone else — the majority of the audience at that performance and the actors on stage. I am so defeated by this issue that I seriously question whether I want to work on stage anymore.”

More recently, Patti missed ten days of the Broadway musical Company due to Covid-19 that also befell cast and crew members. And this was AFTER the show closed down for a year-and-a-half because of the pandemic. Patti hit headlines again by cursing theatergoers for not wearing masks properly.

“Put your mask over your nose. …That’s the rule. If you don’t want to follow the rule, get the f — out!” LuPone continued her tirade after a brief round of applause and cheers:

“Who do you think you are? That you do not respect the people that are sitting around you.”

I say, “BRAVA!!” Patti LuPone says it like it is: Blunt and straightforward. It’s a real showstopper when you get caught in her line of fire.

So, let’s review basic concert and theater etiquette. Remember: what’s happening on the stage is why we go to a performance in the first place. It’s the ill-mannered around us that disrupts actors, musicians, and other audience members.

• Get to the performance on time. Stepping in front of someone after it the concert has started … I can’t even. At least at classical concerts, they wait until intermission to seat you.
• Turn off your phone. A philharmonic bassoonist I know mentioned a colleague who once stopped cold in the middle of a complicated piece when a cellphone went off in the audience. (Helloooo?!?? Don’t we know by now to turn off our electronic devices before a performance? It seems obvious, but clearly, some patrons-of-the-arts have still not read the memo.)
• Enjoy the music, but don’t bob your head or keep rhythm by slapping your knees so that it’s a distraction to the people around you.
• Do not bring children under 8-years old to concerts after 8 p.m.
• Experienced concertgoers should try to suppress their cough until a loud passage or quietly do it into a handkerchief or your elbow. (If you can hold it until intermission, wow. I’m impressed.)
• Unwrap lozenges before the music begins or the curtain goes up. (Perhaps do this right after you turn off your cell phone.)
• Do not talk or whisper to your neighbor. (At one afternoon concert I recently attended, the parent in front of me bent over and whispered to her kid during the entire concert. Not. Kidding.)
• Hold your applause at classical concerts. Look at the program! If you see a piece has numerous movements, don’t clap until the end. Your best bet: Just clap when the rest of the audience starts clapping.

As an audience, you are collectively sharing a magical moment that will be gone forever once the last note or word is played, sung, or spoken. This is the beauty of live performances.

Don’t wreck it for everyone else with slackened etiquette. And don’t even think about doing it if it might give rise to the wrath of Patti LuPone.

Bonni Brodnick is the author of the just-released memoir, “My Stroke in the Fast Lane: A Journey to Recovery” and “Pound Ridge Past,” now in its second edition. Formerly with Glamour and House & Garden magazines, Bonni has written scripts for Children’s Television Workshop, was a weekly newspaper columnist, and was editor of two academic magazines. She is an award-winning communications specialist, a member of Pound Ridge Authors Society, and has a blog (bonnibrodnick.com). Bonni is also an ambassador for the American Heart Association and a proud Stroke Survivor.

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