Sincerity and tenderness are among Drakeford’s trademarks as a performer, but this year she had a chance to combine those with some unusual characteristics. In This Is How We Got Here, she played the sympathetic but angry aunt of a teen who committed suicide. She upped the intensity in Pomona as an apparently willing brothel inmate who exuded compassion along with fearful anxiety. But Drakeford’s final performance of 2016, as the troubled Angelo in an all-female Measure For Measure, was revelatory; she was perfect as the smug, supercilious “saint” who proved to have feet of clay when he lusted after a young novitiate.
Her stage career began in 1972 as one of the original members of The Acting Company, a professional touring theatre company in the US formed by John Houseman. She appeared in shows like The Cradle Will Rock, The Lower Depths, Love’s Labours Lost and Measure for Measure.
LuPone made her Broadway debut the following year when she took on the role of Irina in the 1973 play The Three Sisters, and two years later she was nominated for a Tony Award for her role in the musical The Robber Bridegroom.