The Lady With The Torch
Patti Lu Pone at 54 Below
9 April 2015
3 Stars
A witty woman at my table says “Bette Midler in First Wives Club”. She is right. Power dressing, sassy but elegant. An all cream outfit; a plunging v-necked dress with a pleated skirt, topped off with a smartly tailored one-button jacket. It all emphasises that the magic and colour will come from the wearer in this intimate but ornate space. Later, mid-set, mid-performance, mid-song (Find Me A Primitive Man) the chickens come home to roost.
With a demure flick of the skirt to ensure absolutely no one sees the colour of her undergarments, the diva squats on stage, belts notes into the face of an adoring male fan who is sitting by the stage. She kisses him. More than once. He reacts as though he may die from pleasure. She kisses him again. The audience is concerned he may have a stroke. She ascends, totally in control of him, the room, the song. It’s pure orgasmic electricity as she belts out the next verse, finds another perfectly coiffured, elegantly dressed man close to the stage and then straddles him. The lap dance of his life it seems. Having devoured him, she returns to the stage. She eyes her first prey and asks him: “Are you straight or gay?” “Gay”, he answers, unsure if that is the correct response. It is. Back on her haunches, she cradles his balding head and kisses him for all she is worth. Idly, one wonders if the paramedics are on hand.
This is Patti LuPone in full, unstoppable Diva mode, strutting her cabaret credentials at 54 Below in a show designed to show her range: The Lady With The Torch. Supported by an extraordinarily gifted band (piano, trumpet, trombone, saxophone/oboe, double bass), LuPone demonstrates precisely why she has a cult following.
She looks amazing, and her pert bob makes her seem younger and friendlier than some of her stage performances might suggest. She is supremely confident onstage, occasionally, though, perilously close to arrogant. She certainly does it her way.
Studio 54 below is a fascinatingly intimate space. No matter where you sit, the performer is completely exposed. There is not much room for artifice or deception. But there is plenty of opportunity for raw, visceral displays of vocal prowess and emotional sincerity.
In numbers such as Find Me A Primitive Man, LuPone is peerless. It’s very rare to find that combination of complete surrender to the sense of the music and fiery, rambunctious delivery that ensures thrilling, hilarious results. LuPone makes a real performance of the number – which is the key to her success.
Other songs, some unfamiliar, are more difficult for LuPone to sell. Her voice is too raspy and vigorous for the more delicate melodies, and her way of producing sound is so reliant on her prodigious vibrato and seemingly independent mouth (it moves and contorts itself quite extraordinarily) that nuance and delicacy are unattainable. She has a huge, magnificent booming voice and when her song choices match her voice, she is quite unbeatable.
Diction is, here, not something which LuPone considers essential. The shape of the generality of the sound seems to her more important than clearly defined consonants and vowels. Sometimes, this is fine, especially when the lyrics are well known – but, too often, it is mystifying and confusing. Unlike Opera, in a cabaret words have equal importance to tunes. It is disappointing not to understand what she is saying, especially when she is introducing her band members or extemporising.
There is no faulting her extraordinary delivery of standards such as C’est Magnifique, Me and My Shadow or Frankie and Johnnie were Lovers, and other, less well known (these days) numbers such as Make It Another Old Fashioned, Please and Do It Again. Brutal regret, contemptuous rage and vicious revenge are keys in which LuPone excels.
Other numbers, such as Something Cool, A Cottage For Sale and I’m Through With Love are not so successful. Subtlety is not LuPone’s forte, and songs where the vocal line requires a more subdued approach did not engage. She seems oddly, uncharacteristically disconnected from the fibre of the melody, the spirit of the melancholy that radiates through the lyrics. As well, in those numbers, the singing was more often obviously out of tune than in the songs where brash, brassy belt was the appropriate style.
This is not to say that LuPone is not capable of confounding expectations: she absolutely is. So In Love is not an obvious choice for her vocally but she makes it her own, producing a brightness at the top of the phrases which is both thrilling and surprising.
There is not much patter here and certainly no revelations about the importance of song choices or their reason for performance. There are no trips down memory lane or revelations of aching, brutal honesty. It is not that sort of cabaret. But what patter there is LuPone delivers with rapier precision. An anecdote about her grandmother shooting her grandfather brings down the house. Her description of a number as “the Sicilian National Anthem” is equally hilarious.
Seeing her so close up is rewarding and slightly terrifying. She sings with such complete full-body energy, bordering on a frenzy, that a vein under her right eye fills with blood from the pressure under which she is placing herself and, over the course of several numbers, cuts a blue track across her face. You can never accuse LuPone of being lazy.
When she is in full flight, in tune with song, style and her adoring audience, she is incomparable. As she sang Find Me A Primitive Man, like a tsunami of overwhelming vocal supremacy, she engulfed the entire crowd, men and women alike. Once it was done, everyone was glad they had survived it – but also, pleased and privileged to have lived to experience phenomenal musical storytelling.
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