Books, Arts & Manners: LuPonistas

THOSE of us who arrived for Patti LuPone on Broadway without proper visas were diagnosed according to our degree of benightedness and assigned seats adjacent to fervid LuPonistas. You can recognize these gentlemen (they are rarely females) by their tendency to convulse on the money notes, tear up when Miss LuPone sings to “cruel Johnny,” and make involuntary hand gestures as soon as the piano introduction is into its second bar. I was assigned to a LuPonista First Class, who told our row where he had first heard Patti sing each page of the LuPone songbook.

Unfortunately, despite this level of scholarship, he could not explain the pants suit. When the curtain rises, Miss LuPone sings a few bars from the deep shadows, then emerges in a white blouse that resembles a frilly lampshade and black velveteen pants that exaggerate her pear-shaped bottom beyond what is normally acceptable at Long Island bridge clubs. The only nod the diva makes toward Broadway glamor comes when a quartet of black harmony singers wrap her in a giant yellow feather boa while singing “Ain’t Nobody Here but Us Chickens.”

JB

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John Bloom

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THOSE of us who arrived for Patti LuPone on Broadway without proper visas were diagnosed according to our degree of benightedness and assigned seats adjacent to fervid LuPonistas. You can recognize these gentlemen (they are rarely females) by their tendency to convulse on the money notes, tear up when Miss LuPone sings to “cruel Johnny,” and make involuntary hand gestures as soon as the piano introduction is into its second bar. I was assigned to a LuPonista First Class, who told our row where he had first heard Patti sing each page of the LuPone songbook.

Unfortunately, despite this level of scholarship, he could not explain the pants suit. When the curtain rises, Miss LuPone sings a few bars from the deep shadows, then emerges in a white blouse that resembles a frilly lampshade and black velveteen pants that exaggerate her pear-shaped bottom beyond what is normally acceptable at Long Island bridge clubs. The only nod the diva makes toward Broadway glamor comes when a quartet of black harmony singers wrap her in a giant yellow feather boa while singing “Ain’t Nobody Here but Us Chickens.”