A full-fledged Broadway musical star in an age when that kind of stardom does not transfer automatically to any other area of entertainment,
Patti LuPone, whose stage credits included
Evita,
Les Miserables, and
Anything Goes, was coming out of four non-singing years on the TV drama Life Goes On when she performed the series of live performances excerpted here at
the Westwood Playhouse in Los Angeles in January 1993. (At the top of the show, she announced that she was leaving for London to perform in
Sunset Boulevard, an experience that would prove both a career debacle and a financial windfall when
Andrew Lloyd Webber broke her contract to open the show on Broadway, opting for the bigger name
Glenn Close.) Naturally, the anchors of the act were the songs with which she was associated through her stage triumphs: "I Get a Kick Out of You," "Anything Goes," "Don't Cry for Me Argentina," and "I Dreamed a Dream." But her dramatic skills and clarion voice proved well suited to a wide range of other theater material, especially songs written by
Kurt Weill, such as a medley of "My Ship" from
Lady in the Dark and "Surabaya Johnny" from
Happy End, and the encore, "Lost in the Stars." She also handled well period
pop, such as the
Billy Strayhorn standard "Lush Life" and the
Louis Jordan classic "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens," though the choices of contemporary
pop, while well sung, were less impressive. This was as much an act as a concert, with written patter that made it suitable for nightclubs, even if it was unnecessary on disc. Nevertheless, the album made an excellent introduction to a major performer who remained a kind of an international secret. This highlights album (abbreviating the show from two discs to one) preserved the better-known songs from the set, and though one missed such made-to-order material as the comic "And His Rocking Horse Rode Away" (which demonstrated that
Betty Hutton was another of
LuPone's spiritual ancestors, along with
Ethel Merman) and
Weill's "I'm a Stranger Here Myself" (which showed she had a little of
Mary Martin in her, too), it was ideal for a first-time listener who might then seek out the cast albums on which
LuPone shines. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
