BY STEVE ROTHAUS, srothaus@miamiherald.com
Don't cry for Patti LuPone. Broadway's original Evita has had it tough (like when composer Andrew Lloyd Webber publicly fired her from Sunset Boulevard), but she's also had it good: During the summer in New York, LuPone earned raves for her turn as Momma Rose in Gypsy.
''The best performance since Merman,'' said Broadway producer Manny Kladitis, who's known LuPone about 35 years.
Comparisons to Ethel Merman don't faze LuPone, who'll perform a concert of show music Sunday at the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts.
''That's a compliment, a big compliment,'' LuPone said. ``She had a love of the stage. I have a love of the stage. She was fearless onstage. I am fearless.''
Fearless onstage, perhaps, but unlike Merman, LuPone still gets occasional stage fright before a performance.
'Opening nights take minutes off actors' lives,'' she said. ``Everybody is looking at you. And everyone is. If you fail, you're failing in front of a lot of people. It's almost like throwing the gladiator to the lions. You're fighting for your life.''
LuPone, 58, got her start in the early '70s with John Houseman's Acting Company. That's when she met Kladitis, then the company manager.
''She worked very hard to get where she was going. It certainly wasn't an easy overnight success,'' Kladitis said. ``She's worked her fanny off. She was deliberate and calculated and smart about it. She certainly put in the time. She always had the talent. The raw talent.''
LuPone became famous in 1979 as Lloyd Webber's Evita, singing Don't Cry for Me Argentina. From there she starred in Broadway revivals of Oliver! and Anything Goes.
In 1993, Lloyd Webber cast her as Norma Desmond in the original London production of Sunset Boulevard. But before the show moved to Broadway, the producer-composer fired LuPone and hired Glenn Close.
''That was a deeply, deeply painful experience,'' LuPone said. ``Do I ever want to see Andrew Lloyd Webber again? No. I'll never get over that.''
She continues: ``He doesn't want anyone bigger than he is in the show. He just wants the critical success that Stephen Sondheim has.''
A comeback was hard for LuPone, but she came through big-time starring in two Sondheim revivals, Sweeney Todd in 2005 and this summer's limited run of Gypsy. There's talk about mounting a full Broadway production, but LuPone won't discuss it. She's afraid she'll jinx the project.
She might do a new David Mamet musical, but maybe not, alluding to a Gypsy revival. ''Something may happen,'' LuPone said.
Whatever happens, she just wants to work.
''I want opportunity, whatever that opportunity is,'' LuPone said. ``What audiences want is connection. I know this because I'm onstage. Somehow we've gotten a very far way from the human connection between actor and audience. Our producers have lost sight that the actors are the storytellers. Not a flying helicopter or a flying chandelier.''
IF YOU GO
What: Patti LuPone in concert
Where: Knight Concert Hall, Carnival Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami
When: 8 p.m. Sunday
Cost: $15-$85
Info: 305-949-6722, 866-949- 6722 or www.carnivalcenter.org
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