Review: PATTI LUPONE: A LIFE IN NOTES at Strathmore

In the late 1960s (in her late 60s), cabaret étoile Mabel Mercer added the utterly goofy "Wait 'til We're 65" (by Lerner & Lane) to her sets; when she was well past 50, Barbara Cook began including Harper & Zippel's wildly funny "The Ingenue" to her shows, simultaneously sending up her rivals and ageism. Therefore, at 75, Patti LuPone's penultimate number in her autobiographical revue A Life in Notes brings the wicked funny Patsy Montana's 1934 "I Want to be a Cowboy's Sweetheart"; what is yodeling, after all, but a tamed register break turned into high art? Diva wisdom embraces a good hoot along with the music, the drama, and the magic in the making.

LuPone relives the songs she was hearing on Long Island before she moved on to Juilliard and became the Tony- and Olivier-awarded singer-actor. Songs from 1958 and 1959 include "Summertime, Summertime" (sum-sum-summertime), "Teen Angel" (which she sings with such sincerity that she lifts it from the bathos it's been locked in since Bandstand was the after-school daily), and "Some People" (from Gypsy, of course, by Styne & Sondheim); the latter lets an audience in on the chemistry that connects great song-writing with great singers. Of Bacharach & David's 1966 "Alfie," LuPone makes much more sense of the lyrics than singers usually can because of the uncommon shape and range of the tune. And in collaboration with pianist, arranger, and music director Joseph Thalken, LuPone essays Arlen & Ira Gershwin's 1954 "The Man that Got Away" as if no one has ever sung it before.

In Act II, introduced by "On Broadway" (Mann & Weil), LuPone satisfies the audience's expectation that she will perform songs closely and permanently associated with her; this is a biographical concert after all. But this rendition of "Don't Cry for me Argentina" (Lloyd Webber & Rice) accompanied by Brad Phillips' Spanish guitar separates the song from Broadway's style, raising the song instead to a somehow much purer cultural level. She may no longer vocally own Fantine's "I Dreamed a Dream" (Schönberg & Kretzmer), but her performance of Sondheim's "The Ladies who Lunch" remains a showstopper. Janis Ian's "Stars"--one of the hardest to sing songs ever written--somehow becomes easy along with achingly brilliant when sung by LuPone. Three fine songs with "time" in their titles make an engrossing group: Cole Porter's "Every Time we say Goodbye," Rodgers' & Hart's "I Didn't Know What Time it Was," and Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time." And there's some Bob Dylan, Beatles, and Leiber & Stoller before LuPone's two-hour A Life in Notes concludes with "Those Were the Days"; they were, and these are the songs, my friend. Next stop on the tour is London (sold out). But this link lists subsequent destinations in case you have people (or plane fare). https://www.pattilupone.net/tour.html

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