After a brief hiatus, New York writer, performer and director Ben Rimalower is right back where he belongs.
Rimalower, 41, will return to the stage Aug. 28 at The Art House in Provincetown, Massachusetts with his acclaimed one-man show, “Patti Issues.” The show, which The New York Times praised for its “sharp, observational comedy,” uses Rimalower’s obsession with Broadway diva Patti LuPone as the foil to a deeper narrative about his fractured relationship with his father, who eventually came out as gay. (Catch a sneak peek of the show in the video above.)
Rimalower’s Provincetown performance will be a unique milestone, as he’ll perform on a stage on which LuPone has performed several times. “It’s where I saw Patti in 2012,” he recalled. “She sang ‘Rainbow High’ [from ‘Evita’] for the first time in 30 years and took me out to dinner and to watch the 4th of July Fireworks with Ryan Murphy and his husband,” he recalled. “Then she got my friends drunk on Prosecco and hand fed me oysters ’til we closed down the joint.”
In 2012, Rimalower told HuffPost that he “wanted to write a show about my experiences with Patti because she’s been so important to me, and I love to talk about that and think about that.” Ultimately, he opted for a more personal narrative. “I realized that while I could go on and on about Patti in a way that would only be interesting to people who care,” he said, “that’s not the project I ultimately wanted to write here.”
It’s the first in a series of upcoming engagements for Rimalower, who has directed performances by Cole Escola, Leslie Kritzer and Molly Pope, among others. He’ll bring “Patti Issues” back to The Duplex in New York Sept. 11 and Nov. 13. His other one-man Off-Broadway show, “Bad with Money,” plays The Duplex Oct. 9 and Dec. 11.
Audio recordings of both “Patti Issues” and “Bad With Money” are slated to be released by Roven Records Nov. 26. Both shows are directed by Aaron Mark.
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