A NIGHT OF HIGH NOTES
The beloved and versatile award-winning musical theater star Patti LuPone delighted those who packed Boston’s Symphony Hall last evening with a series of high notes, low notes, and everything in between with her musical memoir, A Life in Notes, conceived and directed by Scott Wittman and written by Jeffrey Richman. Accompanied by two very accomplished musicians—Joseph Thalken (music direction, arrangements, and piano) and Brad Phillips (strings), she offered songs spanning the decades, including not just numbers from her Broadway star turns but also songs that that were popular at different points in her life or that expressed an emotional state for a certain era.
After welcoming the audience and exhibiting her impressive vocal range with Leon Russell’s “A Song for You,” she talked a little about growing up in sleepy Northport, Long Island. Dressed in a sophisticated black pants outfit with wide, glittering lapels, She recalled hits of the 1950s and 1960s with renditions of songs such as “Come on-a My House,” delivering the jaunty celebration of ethnic hospitality with a seductive wink, and the maudlin “Teen Angel” with a heavy dose of irony as she recalled the Cold War anxieties that cast a pall over her growing up years. Songs like “Alfie” (Burt Bacharach and Hal David) and “The Man That Got Away” (Arlen and Gershwin) evoked the questioning and questing of adolescence and beyond. And yet—despite the acknowledged pain of that stage of life, that set closed with the joyously nostalgic “Those Were the Days.”
Following intermission, LuPone appeared on the stage in a silvery caped gown. Phillips turned his strings into an impressive percussion section and LuPone opened this set with the 1963 hit “On Broadway,” and with that, moved into a set celebrating her many successful Broadway runs. “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” “I Dreamed a Dream,” and “Ladies Who Lunch” celebrating LuPone’s Tony and Olivier-award winning performances in Evita, Les Misérables, and Company.
Despite her dizzying successes, LuPone suggested that she maintained her perspective through her heady rise to fame with Janis Ian’s “Stars”:
Stars, they come and go
They come fast or slow
They go like the last light
Of the sun, all in a blaze
And all you see is glory…
LuPone, of course, has been a star with real staying power, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t known the kind of pain others have known. She evoked the wild and crazy 80s with Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes,” but then she acknowledged the loss of so many of her friends and colleagues to the AIDS epidemic with Porter’s “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye.”
LuPone brought us all the way up through the COVID pandemic, recalling the months when everything shut down and time seemed to stand still, a moment that allowed her to rediscover her deep love for her husband and son with Rodgers and Hart’s “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was” and Cyndi Lauper and Robert Hyman’s “Time After Time.” She closed with a beautiful rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young” (with gorgeous instrumental support from Thalken and Phillips) but of course the audience demanded an encore. She returned to the stage to offer Lennon and McCartney’s “In My Life” as an encore. This seasoned performer stopped in the middle of that affecting song. “Sorry,” she said, “I forgot the lyrics!” She laughed along with the audience, regained her place in the song, and then segued smoothly into a reprise of “Those Were the Days.”
photos by Robert Torres/Celebrity Series of Boston
poster photo by Douglas Friedman
Patti LuPone A Life in Notes
Celebrity Series of Boston
reviewed April 2 2024 at Symphony Hall in Boston
for more tour dates and cities, visit La LuPone
