LuPone’s Life Before ‘Life Goes On’ Centered on Musical Theater

For the past three years, Patti LuPone has played Libby Thacher, wife and mother of an Illinois family whose older son has Down’s syndrome, on the ABC series “Life Goes On.” And on Monday, she appears as the blind sister of an inventor in “The Water Engine,” on TNT at 5, 7, and 9 p.m. The work is adapted by David Mamet from his play.

But in her life before “Life,” LuPone was a musical theater star: She won a Tony for “Evita” and originated the part of the ill-fated Fantine in the London production of “Les Miserables.” It is to these performing roots that she returns Friday and next Saturday at the Hollywood Bowl, singing a tribute to Irving Berlin with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.

Her six songs are part of the act that LuPone, 43, takes on the road when on hiatus from “Life Goes On.” Her television character may be somewhat bland, but there’s no overlooking the dynamic LuPone when she’s on stage.

“I throw myself into it--I don’t know any other way,” says the performer, who was one of the original members of the drama division at Juilliard. “There is nothing like standing center stage in a darkened theater, opening my mouth and letting it out.”

Show biz pervades LuPone’s personal life as well. While portraying Lady Bird Johnson in the television film “L.B.J.,” she met assistant cameraman Matt Johnston, and married him on stage at Lincoln Center during her run there in “Anything Goes.” The couple has a 21-month-old son, Joshua.

Next month, LuPone takes some time off from “Life Goes On” to play Norma Desmond in the first workshop performance of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new musical, “Sunset Boulevard.” “It’s part of a festival at his country estate in England,” she says. “After the performance there’s going to be a debate, and the next day everyone plays croquet. I’m not going to be debating anything, though--I’ll be hitting a pub.”