POP MUSIC REVIEW : Raitt in the Role of Her Life

Finally, Bonnie Raitt has the script she wants to play--and this blues-singing daughter of a well-known stage actor played it to the hilt at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano.

Raitt’s new script is triumphant: Cast off as a commercial has-been, a hard-working, resilient singer surges back with a hit album that underlines, rather than compromises, her talent. Playing for a rapturous audience Monday night in one of the small clubs where she kept the faith during lean years, Raitt basked openly in her success.

“Man, it feels like prom night,” she said after waves of applause greeted the title song from her comeback album “Nick of Time.” But this evening in a steamy club played more like an episode of “This Is Your Life,” with Raitt as her own emcee.

Raitt, 39, paused often during the nearly two-hour set to look back over the past and savor the present from a promontory that wasn’t easily reached.

She made several oblique references to the fact that lately she has been appearing on far bigger stages (such as the Wiltern Theatre, where she and her band play Friday night). She was less oblique in a couple of barbed comments about her old record label, Warner Bros., which twice cut Raitt loose during the ‘80s.

Clearly, Raitt relished moments such as the introduction to “Three Time Loser,” where she was able to speak with the swagger of a winner: “I’m not taking (any guff) from anybody,” she vowed. “It’s great to be able to stand up here and say it.”

Yes, Raitt was full of herself, but that’s appropriate. Fullness has been her style--both in the brimming sass of her guise as a blueswoman who revels in raunchiness, and in the fullness of emotion that Raitt can bring to bear on songs that call for gentle warmth or quiet expressions of pain. On this night, especially in those more circumspect moments, she was full to overflowing.

Raitt’s freewheeling side came out best in playfully jumping versions of “Woman Be Wise” and “Give It Up,” a couple of old favorites that she and her sharp quintet did up in old-time New Orleans style, complete with two tootling horns.

After starting the show with amiable rockers that didn’t quite catch fire, Raitt turned to songs from “Nick of Time” that brought the show into focus: “Too Soon to Tell” with an aching but firm lament about being spurned in love, and “Cry on My Shoulder” with a comforting message of sympathy in which Raitt’s earthy singing balanced a polished pop arrangement.

Raitt struck a moving grace note by pausing near the end of her celebratory set to dedicate a lovely elegy, “River of Tears,” to the memory of musicians Lowell George, Paul Butterfield, Jesse Ed Davis and Carl Radle--”the ones I had to say goodby to.”

Her singing and playing carried the lament as far as she could take it. Then, in a gesture that was as eloquent as the music, Raitt stopped playing, cradled the guitar against her body, and embraced herself against the sadness of loss.

Before closing with one last rocker, Raitt sang yet another telling, quiet song, John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery.” The song is about a woman so isolated and bereft of prospects for warmth that she considers giving up on life. But something in Raitt’s rendition--a spark of determination, or perhaps even anger--suggested reserves of toughness that would enable her to get by.

One of these days, Richard Thompson, who opened with a 55-minute solo set, also will get a gold record and a triumphant evening to go with it. When that day comes, Thompson probably will show the same coolly sardonic humor he did at the Coach House, along with the same incomparable guitar style.

Thompson starts with the deft, fluid attack and rhythmic drive that most guitarists hold as their ultimate goal--then proceeds to insert the distinctive bends, groans, shivers and chromatic strokes that make his playing truly special.