Adelaide Cabaret Festival<\/p>\n
Patti LuPone: A Life in Notes<\/p>\n
Patti LuPone comes back to Adelaide to perform a program of memorable songs and show us what timeless cabaret looks and sounds like.<\/p>\n
Written by Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n
She\u2019s back. Better than ever. New York singer Patti LuPone returns to the Cabaret Festival with a crisp new show featuring songs that made her name as a Broadway star ,as well as other personal favourites that inspired and shaped her progress. You could say they mean the world to her.<\/p>\n
In 2010 she published a memoir of a career in music and theatre which began in the late 1960s and has continued for more than fifty years. As she wryly observes, it has even kept on going since 2010. So it is time for another memoir , a musical one of songs heard and remembered. She calls the show A Life in Notes<\/em> and, as she describes it herself, it is one of high notes, low notes, love notes and (sometimes) wrong notes.<\/p>\n As she takes to the stage at the Festival Theatre, Patti LuPone is given a rapturous welcome. It was big when she last played here in 2018, but this time the full house is in full roar. The d\u00e9cor is minimal and elegant, a grand piano with a bowl of red roses, a backdrop of pastel lighting, and her outstanding band of two.<\/p>\n Musical Director, the brilliant Joseph Thalken is back again at the keyboard and, over to stage left, is a cluster of instruments and mics. This is the string section, guitars, mandolin and violin, all performed by the equally accomplished Brad Phillips. LuPone, stylish as ever in her black suit, opens with \u201dSong For You\u201d. It is the first of many interesting choices. Written by Leon Russell, Ray Charles and Willie Nelson, it is a reflective ballad, tinged with weary regret \u2013 \u201cI\u2019ve been so many places \u2026I\u2019ve acted out my life in stages \/with ten thousand people watching.\u201d But there are no traces of Leon, Ray and Willie here. As with every song performed, LuPone\u2019s vocal is unequivocally hers.<\/p>\n The mood and tempo swiftly shifts to Rosemary Clooney\u2019s \u201cCome On-A my House\u201d and the first of Patti\u2019s memories of temps perdu. Northport High School in Long Island New York is an important part of her early musical education and remains a continuing connection (in fact she used the current Northport choir as back-up in her live recorded set, Don\u2019t Monkey with Broadway<\/em>).<\/p>\n She recalls the intensity of late fifties teenage emotions, crushes on Disney heart-throbs like Tommy Kirk, or the later, more sultry, vibes of Troy Donahue. The Jamies 1958 hit \u201cSummertime, Summertime\u201d, with doo-wop harmonies from the boys in the band, captures the angst of early Sixties pop. Mark Dinning\u2019s \u201cTeen Angel\u201d \u2013 Romeo and Juliet in a car wreck \u2013 is perfectly evoked, as is \u201cTown without Pity \u201cwith LuPone out-doing Gene Pitney in the aching operatic, high register lamentation department.<\/p>\n But there is nothing strictly chronological about the setlist. It is instead an emotional timeline \u2013 so the tortured Mark Blitzstein\u2019s \u201cI Wish it So\u201d and Eartha Kitt\u2019s \u201cLilac Wine\u201d fit right in with the theme of late teen heartbreak.<\/p>\n The selections are intriguing \u2013 the rapid fire Broadway lyrics of Jule Styne\u2019s \u201cSome People\u201d, the feminist reflection on Burt Bacharach\u2019s often flippantly performed \u201cAlfie\u201d, and a more-in-anger-than-in-sorrow take on Judy Garland\u2019s \u201cThe Man That Got Away,\u201d renders the well-known much less comfortably familiar. That also goes for the Act One closer – Mary Hopkin\u2019s \u201cThose Were the Days\u201d in a more elegiac key.<\/p>\n The strong second half – LuPone is back in a silvery gown – is also notable for the freshness of the arrangements. The standard, \u201cOn Broadway\u201d is performed with piano and a vamping mandolin, \u201cDon\u2019t Cry for Me Argentina\u201d freed from orchestral histrionics by a mournful Spanish guitar.<\/p>\n It took a while, but when LuPone swivels back from the piano with a martini glass in her hand, it is time for Stephen Sondheim. And, of course , it is the acerbic \u201cLadies Who Lunch\u201d from Company,<\/em> sung by Joanne, a role reprised by LuPone in 2022, earning her a third Tony Award.<\/p>\n Conceived and flawlessly directed by Scott Wittman, A Life in Notes<\/em>, not only showcases LuPone\u2019s brilliance as a performer but illuminates the song selections. The medley of songs about time, beginning with Cole Porter\u2019s \u201cEvery Time We Say Goodbye\u201d re-framed as a 1980s AIDS lament, morphing into \u201cI Didn\u2019t Know what Time it Was\u201d by Lorenz Hart and concluding with a terrific version of Cyndi Lauper\u2019s \u201cTime after Time\u201d, is not only intuitive but gives each song exponential effect.<\/p>\n This ledger of musical memories also includes Bob Dylan. He has briefly had a Frank Sinatra phase himself, but only Patti Lupone can extrude real feeling from the rather hackneyed \u201cMake You feel My Love\u201d. And, \u201cForever Young\u201d was begging for inclusion, even if it runs perilously close to becoming a Boomer singalong.<\/p>\n Lennon and McCartney\u2019s lambent ballad\u201d In My Life\u201d made an apt encore with LuPone again showing how she can magnify the emotion and implication of lyrics without excess. Another captivating moment in this splendid masterclass in cabaret was \u201cStars\u201d, the wistful Janis Ian song. \u201cStars, they come and go\/ They come fast or slow\/They go like the last light\u2026\u201d.<\/p>\n That may be true, but Patti LuPone is still burning brighter than ever.<\/p>\n Patti LuPone \u2013 A Life in Notes<\/em> was performed once only on June 20 at the Festival Theatre. The Adelaide Cabaret Festival continues until June 22.<\/p>\n Cabaret Festival review: Patti LuPone – A Life in Notes<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n