The Vegas Guy: Patti, Patti, Patti

Patti Lupone is one of those singers whose name should always be followed by exclamation points. It has to be "Patti Lupone!" or perhaps just "Patti!" or, better yet, "Patti Patti Patti!"

Because Patti is a belter. She's got that Ethel Merman/Kate Smith gene that can't be staunched no matter how many Dior scarves you wrap around her neck. If Patti sang "The Shadow of Your Smile" -- let's hope she never does -- she would need a trombone section to fill in the background.

Patti is an acquired taste, though. Frighteningly, I think I'm acquiring it. This results from having seen both her one-woman vibrato-fest on Broadway a few years back, and more recently her road show in the intimate cabaret room of the Mohegan Sun casino. I was curious. Sure she can wow the fervid "Luponistas" who frequent drag shows in the East Village, but what's she got in that musical-comedy knapsack for the rank tourists of New England?

Quite a bit, as it turns out. I don't think Patti could play anywhere much farther from New York than, say, Atlantic City, but when she's in her eastern seaboard element, she can always pack in an adoring mix of middle-aged matinee ladies and the kind of gentleman who has a mint copy of Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made For Walking" on his Tuscan mantle. They don't just adore her, they want to BE her.

For those who wonder what I'm talking about, you're not alone. I, too, missed the first several incarnations of Patti Lupone. I missed her legendary star turn as Evita Peron. I missed her as Fantine in "Les Miz," as Reno Sweeney in "Anything Goes," and as the original Norma Desmond in the London production of "Sunset Boulevard."

To devoted Luponians, though, a cultural disaster occurred when Patti was fired and replaced by Glenn Close just before "Sunset Boulevard" opened in New York. This tragic event is regarded as a theatrical equivalent to the Kennedy assassination: a diva in her prime, in the most glorious role of her life, stricken down before her greasepaint was dry.

Andrew "Lee Harvey" Lloyd-Webber is so reviled by her fans that he is never mentioned in the current show, even as she sings one after another of his hits. When she did her Broadway turn, she made several not-so-thinly-veiled references to the firing, all in that Las Vegas "show patter" kind of way, and at one point trotted out her Norma Desmond costume, one of many she says she has stolen (wink-wink) from various theatrical producers. Alas, this is about as profound as Patti's show ever gets.

This time she announces to the Mohegan audience that she intends to sing highlights from her entire career, plus all the songs that she always wanted to sing, plus all the songs she could have sung better than the person who was actually hired to sing them. Then she proceeds to deliver on all promises, beginning with her first role in "Bye Bye Birdie" and continuing through Nellie Forbush's "I'm In Love with a Wonderful Guy" from "South Pacific" (we're still in high school at this point) and segueing into her wishful-thinking stage-door rejection roles -- "Don't Rain on My Parade" from "Funny Girl" (OK, this is pushing it, even for Patti -- she can belt but she can't belt Streisand-style) and "Easy To Be Hard" from "Hair." ("I was young and I looked good naked," she said. "I should have been in that show.")

Fortunately, she seems to have recovered from the emotional trauma of the Lloyd-Webber estrangement, so that she's trimmer and her voice is sharper. The last time I saw her delve into the Lupone songbook, she emerged in a white blouse that resembled a frilly lampshade and black velveteen pants that exaggerated her pear-shaped bottom beyond what is normally acceptable at Long Island bridge clubs. The only nod she made toward Broadway glamour that night came when a quartet of black harmony singers wrapped her in a giant yellow feather boa while singing "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens."

She still has the pants, but they're complemented this time by a much less theatrical draped silk blouse -- in red, of course.

She has not, alas, abandoned the "I shoulda been a contender" attitude, doing her torch song from "The Baker's Wife," which closed out of town, a fact that still bugs her. ("We should have marched into the Martin Beck Theater and closed on opening night like we deserved.") She brings the house down by doing BOTH parts in the hot-Latina duet from "West Side Story" and then gets a nice ovation on -- you aren't gonna believe this -- "My Boy Bill" from "Carousel." (OK, she has moxie -- the moxie of a transgender lesbian. It made me wince.)

"I could have been Mary Martin," she says, before telling the story of "the lowest point in my life," when she was reduced to singing at Grossinger's in the Catskills. (She may not realize it, but the director of entertainment who booked her into Mohegan is a Grossinger, of the Catskills Grossinger's. Whoops!) It was there that she first sang "Never Never Land," and after hearing her version today, I think she actually could have been Mary Martin.

But then the problem with Patti is that she could have been anybody. She's the ultimate musical theater performer, and that means she's ultimately not distinctive or exotic enough to become a star. Listening to her note-perfect renderings of all these standards, you notice something a little cold and mannered at the center, and it's not hard to see how casting directors decided, "Well, she sang it better than this other girl, but she just doesn't do it for me."

Her signature number is, of course, "Don't Cry For Me,

Argentina." She wanted to be "Peter Pan," but she was cast as Evita instead, and even though it remains the biggest hit of her career, she speaks of it as though she's not that fond of the part.

She closes with "Something To Say I Was Here," which sounds plaintive and sad under the circumstances (diva who missed her destiny), and then encores with the Stevie Wonder song with the lyric, "If it's magic, why can't we make it everlasting?" At that point I thought the show was getting downright morbid. Patti desperately wants to be everlasting. Thank God she did "Just the Way You Look Tonight" to bring the audience out of its funk, and we all breathed easier when it became apparent that she was heading out after the show to play the Blazing 7's 25-cent slot machines.

You worry about Patti, last of the great belters. A diva without an audience is a terrible thing to behold -- which makes us love her all the more, of course.

(E-mail Joe Bob Briggs, "The Vegas Guy," at [email protected] or visit Joe Bob's Web site at joebobbriggs.com. Snail-mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, Texas 75221.)