Patti LuPone Lights Up West End for One-Week Concert Series

Patti LuPone is returning to West End with a week’s worth of concerts later this year.

The Tony and Olivier award-winning actress will appear at the Leicester Square Theatre from June 16-23 to perform a series of 75-minute shows. Each show will be hosted by actor and musician Seth Rudetsky, who will accompany LuPone on piano and also interview her about her career throughout the evening. The concert will include music from “Evita,” “Anything Goes,” “Gypsy” and “Company.”

The actress also will perform a special one-night only performance at Carnegie Hall in New York later this year. Dubbed “Far Away Places,” the performance will take place November 7 and is described by Playbill as a “travelogue of styles and stories that includes songs by Kurt Weill, Cole Porter and Edith Piaf.”

LuPone is best known for originating the role of Fantine in the original production of “Les Miserables,” and she also originated the role of Norma Desmond in the London production of “Sunset Boulevard.” On Broadway she won Tony Awards for her performances in “Evita” and “Gypsy,” and she was nominated for Tonys for “Anything Goes,” “Sweeney Todd” and “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.”

On other news, LuPone just released a new live CD titled Far Away Places: Live at 54 Below. The album was recorded live in a new nightclub in the basement of the infamous Studio 54 in New York. The singer was the first performer at the club, which opened in June of last year.

The album was released January 15, and the New York Times says it “Certifies Ms. LuPone’s place in the lineage of quirky international chanteuses like Lotte Lenya, Marlene Dietrich and Edith Piaf, who, like Ms. LuPone, conquered show business with forceful, outsize personalities while playing by their own musical rules.”