Of Bears and Penguins

It may surprise you, gentle reader, but I was a precocious child of eccentric tastes. Raffi’s Baby Beluga was fine, but for my money I dug the Broadway Cast Recording of Evita starring Patti LuPone in the title role. I am not making this up. By the time I was 5, I had the entire piece memorized.

When my niece was about 3 she had a real thing for the Beatles and Eleanor Rigby was her favorite song. I always found it disconcerting to hear those lyrics coming out of her 3 year old mouth (all the lonely people, where do they all come from?). I can only imagine that the lyrics of Don’t Cry for me Argentina (So I chose freedom, running around trying everything new, but nothing impressed me at all) emanating from me were equally disturbing to my family.

We owned this recording because my Dad saw the play, with Ms. LuPone, in New York. In a theatre so small he could smell the smoke from Mandy Patinkin’s cigar. He has always said that the show “was great.”

She won a Tony for that show, she originated the role of Fantine in the London production of Les Miserables. Most recently she was in the outstanding 2005 revival of Sweeney Todd, in New York. When she is on a stage she commands it, her voice able to navigate deep gravity of emotion as well as delicate comic turns.

I heard the orchestra director at Mizzou say that as musicians, we must absolutely walk the very edge of disaster, must be willing to walk to the very edge and then that tiny bit more – if we don’t walk that line then we are serving neither our art or our audience. It stirs no great response to give a perfectly safe performance. And this is the kind of performer LuPone is – you can hear it in every recording she has ever made.

In her turn as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd, LuPone at once inspires revulsion and sympathy for a character who by all rights is disgusting. The audience, despite Mrs. Lovett’s obvious flaws, does want her on some level to get a house by the sea with Mr. T.

Tomorrow night I will hear LuPone in person. She will sing and I will bask in the presence of one of the all time great performers. And it will be a wonderful evening.