By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ***** Tour continues through 24 May 2025 Tickets

Setlist: A Song For You; Come-On-A My House; Summertime Summertime; Ebb Tide; We Kiss In A Shadow; Teen Angel; Town Without Pity; I Wish It So; Some People; Lilac Wine; Alfie; Saratoga Summer Song; The Man That Got Away; Those Were The Days; On Broadway; Don’t Cry For Me Argentina; I Dreamed A Dream; The Ladies Who Lunch; Stars; Anything Goes; Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye; I Didn’t Know What Time It Was; Time After Time; Make You Feel My Love; Ready To Begin Again (Manya’s Song); Forever Young

This ornate London theatre has a 2,558 capacity and it’s testament to LuPone’s star quality during this biographical show in which she appears onstage with only 2 musicians that it feels much more intimate.

• Read on for reasons including how LuPone’s star quality make this gigantic venue fizz with the intimacy of an off-Broadway dive bar

The 3-time Tony Award winner (including for the Broadway transfer of Company, Gielgud Theatre) explains in the programme that this Life In Notes show and album ‘isn’t a cabaret setting where I might interact with an audience, it’s more a scripted concert’.

Nevertheless an overexcited audience member can’t help but shout out: ‘I do!’ when LuPone asks rhetorically: ‘Does anyone still wear a hat?’ during Company‘s The Ladies Who Lunch before following it seamlessly with the song’s punchline: ‘I’ll drink to that!’ as she raises a glass and the crowd erupts.

The concert begins with songs from her youth as LuPone reflects on growing up in America and falling in love for the 1st time and with the wrong guy. The sound is occasionally distant and it’s not really until Some People from Gypsy, 1 of the shows she won a Tony for, that things really get going.

At the interval the queue for the gents snakes out of the toilets and we joke with the ladies finding it much easier to go for a comfort break that we’ve not known a line like it since the last Bernadette Peters gig in London.

LuPone changes from black trouser suit in the 1st half to a silver gown and billowing cape in the 2nd and we’re immediately transported On Broadway and shortly after to Don’t Cry For Me Argentina, from Evita, her 3rd Tony-winning role.

The most affecting part of the show is when she explains how she performed in Anything Goes in New York in the 80s and how that period of excess morphed into 1 of loss as so many of her friends died from AIDS and sings Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye.

We’re not really star spotting but we can’t help but notice Sir Ian McKellen, Heartstopper‘s Joe Locke and Mel Giedroyc as we look about us.

She closes by reflecting on the pandemic and the time it enabled her to spend with her family in a beautiful section that includes Make You Feel My Love made famous by Adele and Cyndi Lauper‘s Time After Time.

It’s easy to forget how funny she is and she concludes with a spot of yodelling with her string instrumentalist Brad Phillips and music director Joseph Thalken (both pictured above).

We’d listened to the album before the show and it was a faithful re-creation of it but what we won’t forget is the clear diction, power of LuPone’s voice, sense of fun and ability to make this gigantic venue fizz with the intimacy of an off-Broadway dive bar.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Patti LuPone Tickets
• Have you seen a Patti LuPone show before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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