Saturday Matinee

Sometimes, the audience becomes an unwitting additional character in a show. At Patti Lupone’s one-woman show at the Mondavi Center on Saturday night titled “Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda”, the show itself was amazing. Backed by pianist Joseph Talken playing with witty ease, Lupone was her larger-than-life self, showcasing her performing skills in a series of showtunes and personal anecdotes of her journey through career highs and lows – mass cattle calls (auditions with non unionized actors where hundreds of people show up to audition), her accidental entrance to Juilliard, or so she says, and through several Tony awards. She delivers with spot-on comedic timing and a flair for the dramatic. And that voice! Not the most refined, it’s not even her power to bring down the house that’s the most impressive, but her ability to hold your attention with breathless anticipation. This one-woman show is a perfect vehicle for her persona as the quintessential performer. 

I couldn’t help but to feel that it was a bit unfortunate that the audience was filled with people who didn’t seem to know a lot about Broadway. This show was put on in honor of Chancellor Larry and Rosalie Vanderhoef, who is retiring soon after an illustrious career. Chandellor Vanderhoef did a lot in promoting the arts in this community, even in just building the magnificent Mondavi Center which brings in a lot of art in itself. From our orchestra seats, the audience was packed with people who looked like administrators, many of them with nametags from a previous event, in what looked like in honor of the chancellor. Everyone in the audience seemed to know each other, and my friend and I were apparently in the middle of about 10 different conversations with people in front of us talking through us to speak to the people behind us. The only exception that I could see was the front row of starry-eyed young men hanging on her every word. 

With Lupone’s show, it was too bad that when she pointed the mike towards the audience to sing along, she was met with dead silence. Being a cabaret-style show that depends on casual audience interaction, this part sadly fell flat, through no fault of her own. But she geared up and utilized everything she had (including a perfeclty handled impromptu moment where she almost fell through a trap door in the wall) to whip up audience enthusiasm. She was able to get the audience palpably excited even if no one recognized the showtunes. And by the end with a rousing medley of Sondheim songs including the powerhouse “Being Alive”, it was obvious that she had a theater full of her newest fans.

A word on Chancellor Vanderhoef and the wonderful Mondavi Center. If he brought in the Mondavi Center, that alone is enough to convince me that he is a great man with an uncanny unique vision for the arts. As an example of the great programming here, I have seen Ballet Preljocaj, Yo-Yo Ma, the San Francisco Symphony with Mason Bates and Yuja Wang, and Patti Lupone in the span about a month. Next year, this center is bringing in the infamous and hilarious Ballet Trockadero and Morphoses, Christopher Wheeldon’s company. Even with the recession and an increase in more “conservative” financially dependable programs such as classical music concerts, how fabulous and risky is that programming? Love!

Mondavi Center