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[[image - black & white photograph of Patti LuPone in Anything Goes, other cast members]]
[[caption]] Patti LuPone in the role originated by Ethel Merman in the 1934 Anything Goes[[/caption]]
[[photo credit: BRIGITTE LACOMBE]]

"They tell you where you need to slow down or speed up. It's not easy to find and maintain laughs, and you need time to develop that rapport with the audience. That's the joy of live theatre."

Actually, the actress adds, her extensive theatrical credits weren't the best preparation for playing Reno Sweeney. "I told Jerry that it wasn't Juilliard that helped me understand this part, it was the night club experience. Night clubs are great fun, but they're very hard. It's just you up there, and you have to really be yourself. That's probably the most difficult thing to do, but it informed me as an actor."

LuPone and her co-stars clearly are having fun onstage, especially during choreographer Michael Smuin's dance numbers. "I'm so angry that I don't really have taps on the bottom of my shoes," she says of the "Anything Goes" number. "I want to tap so badly, but they say it'll clunk around too much. I'm thinking of taking lessons--I just bought a pair to tap shoes, the first since I went to Miss Marguerite's Dance Studio when I was four."

Reflecting on the enduring appeal of Anything Goes, LuPone says, "I think it evokes a time when things were different and perhaps better, a period of greater simplicity. I wonder if we're swinging back to a time when audience don't need the realism thrust upon them because it's so prevalent in our daily lives."

For Jerry Zaks Anything Goes is a reminder of why he abandoned pre-med studies at Dartmouth in favor of a more unpredictable career. "Someone invited me to go see the Winter Carnival musical," he recalls, "and it was Wonderful Town, a real old-fashioned show with a wonderful score and a witty, clever plot. I had never seen a show before in my life. It was really from that moment on that I decided to pursue some sort of lie in the theatre. The spirit of this production is very similar to the spirit of that first musical I ever saw. Just before the opening I was thinking that when I can distance myself a bit from all the nit-picking, I'm really going to enjoy looking at Anything Goes."

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