photo courtesy of Cohn Dutcher & Associates
Patti LuPone
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Matchless Patti LuPone teamed up with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra (NJSO) and conductor Joseph Thalken, who had paced her in "Gypsy," for an evening in the New Jersey Performing Arts Center's Prudential Hall, in Newark, on April 10, billed as "Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda" or, as she put it, "I'm gonna sing every song from every role I ever wanted to play!" Giving us a bit of biography, to put the songs in the context of her life story, the Broadway diva gave us not only the powerhouse numbers we associate with her, but also other familiar songs that took us by surprise here.

After extended orchestral selections by Jule Styne, from "Gypsy;" Cole Porter, from "Anything Goes;" Kurt Weill, from "Lady in the Dark;" and Irving Berlin, from "Annie Get Your Gun," not to mention some "Evita," "The Baker's Wife," and "Oliver!" to whet our appetites for LuPone's arrival, the lady of the hour seized the stage to salute "Broadway, Broadway, How Great You Are," in a number from "Gypsy," and recall her first stage appearances, as a teenager on Long Island, by singing Rosie's "An English Teacher," from Strouse and Adams' "Bye Bye Birdie," and a syncopated "A Wonderful Guy," Ensign Nellie Forbush's song from Rodgers and Hammerstein's "South Pacific." LuPone shared recollections of unsuccessful auditions and, really selling it, belted out "Don't Rain on My Parade," from Styne's "Funny Girl," which she sang when she tried out for a part in the national tour of Cy Coleman's "Sweet Charity," and wrung the pathos from "Easy to Be Hard," which she might have sung had her headshot netted her a role in Rado, Ragni and McDermott's "Hair."

LuPone landed a place in the Juilliard School's Drama Department by singing, "So just remember when you're lower than low/there's always one step further down you can go," and after graduating, got a role in Stephen Schwartz's "The Baker's Wife," which failed to reach Broadway, but gave us the song "Meadowlark," with which she moved us here.

Quiet numbers are not the first things one thinks of in connection with Patti LuPone, but she showed us that when restraint is called for, it's part of her repertoire, too, by joining Thalken, singing from the piano, in a gently jazzy lullaby; singing Nancy's "As Long As He Needs Me," from Lionel Bart's "Oliver!" with understatement-until the rafter-ringing climax; and, with Broadway's Paul Ford at the piano, fielding pianissimos and head tone in "A Quiet Thing," from Kander and Ebb's "Flora the Red Menace."

Louise was the role in "Gyspy" that LuPone played on Long Island, but she has since, of course, graduated to Mama Rose, and with NJSO, she brought down the house with her forceful "Everything's Coming Up Roses." Peter Pan was "a part I wanted to play all my life," LuPone confided, and with Styne, Comden and Green's "Never Neverland," she recreated a moment from a low point in her career, when she sang the touching anthem at Grossinger's, in the Catskills, and a woman in the front row complained, "Too loud, Patti!" Greater things were, happily, in store, for her, however, and, with arms stretched up and out in that iconic pose, LuPone rolled back 30+ years to become Eva Perón once more and sing "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina," from Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Evita," to thunderous applause anew.

As the evening wound down, LuPone expressed concern with leaving something behind for posterity, in Flaherty and Ahrens' "I Was Here," from "The Glorious Ones;" queried, in Stevie Wonder's "If It's Magic," "then why can't it be everlasting?;" delivered Kern and Fields' "The Way You Look Tonight," while snapping photos of the audience, and gave it a big finish; and, in an a cappella, blissfully unamplified encore, mused on making today count, because we won't still be here "A Hundred Years from Today."

Watch for LuPone's forthcoming memoir, due out in the fall, and check www.njsymphony.org for future NJSO concerts.