Star Power, Times Two, Lights Up Bowl

Clear skies smiled above, the way they generally do out here, but in musical-theater terms, it was The Perfect Storm: John Mauceri conducting his 200th concert with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, and the first-ever pops concert pairing of two superb Broadway-savvy thrushes, Patti LuPone and Audra McDonald.

Crash went the waves of Jerome Kern strings. BANG! went Jule Styne’s incomparable “Gypsy” overture--one of the true killers, right up there with Gershwin’s “Of Thee I Sing” and Bernstein’s “Candide.” Kern, Styne, Kurt Weill and Harold Arlen, among other late greats, each had a very good night Saturday at the Bowl, as did the audience attending this for a certifiably sensational “Sensational Evening of Song.”

Such billing practically begs for a comeuppance. But no. Sensational was about right.

Dueling divas? Absolutely. In the nicest way, fine points of Broadway divadom provided a good-natured undercurrent. “Wait a minute--where’s my water?” McDonald huffed, jokingly, after LuPone took a sip from a nearby glass. After McDonald’s first encore, a thrilling “Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home” from her latest album, “How Glory Goes,” LuPone came out and hollered: “I’m scared of Audra McDonald!” Could she top it? Did she need a lifeline? She did not. The legions of “Evita” fans in attendance went nertz once LuPone blasted her way into “Buenos Aires.”

(I’d like to personally thank Ms. LuPone and Mr. Mauceri for doing that “Evita” selection rather than “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina.”)

Early on, Mauceri acknowledged to the audience his desire not to stroll down “memory lane” by way of one hugely popular standard after another. For proof LuPone performed “When the Sun Comes Out,” a low-keyed 1941 Arlen/Ted Koehler heartbreaker. From her splendid Arlen-heavy “How Glory Goes,” McDonald graced the Bowl with “I Had Myself a True Love,” as well as the lesser-known Jerry Bock/Sheldon Harnick “Fiorello!” upper, “When Did I Fall in Love?”

LuPone’s a smart one: Rather than Judy Garland-ing us into submission every number, which her most fervent fan base might actually prefer, she allows herself an interior space, a quieter, easier range of emotional expression when it makes sense. It made lovely sense on “It Never Was You” from Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson’s score for “Knickerbocker Holiday.”

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The ghost of Garland hovered over the evening, however, and the powerful stylistic influence of Barbra Streisand informed the proceedings as well. The evening’s waves-of-love fest concluded with back-to-back encores of the “Get Happy”/”Happy Days Are Here Again” duet, as arranged for the 1969 version performed by Garland and Streisand. Especially near the end, audience members interjected little telegrams of love, “We love you!” and “You go, girl” and the like. (One can imagine LuPone and McDonald backstage after the final bows saying: “You da diva.” “No, you da diva.”)

Mauceri made a gallant attempt in his introductory remarks to remind us that this show was in fact not about any one or two performers. Excellent try there. Nonetheless, Mauceri and the Bowl Orchestra fared particularly well with the Weill “Songbook for Orchestra,” a conflation of two Morton Gould-arranged concert suites, co-arranged here by Mauceri. To hear “Mack the Knife” in this version is to hear a standard reborn, in all its eerie brilliance. It’s the sound of a composer inspired, of a city (Berlin) in creative ferment--and the sound of a mass murderer going about his business, in a country on the brink of unimaginable disaster.

In the context of such riches, the “Ragtime” orchestral suite fared somewhat poorly. I realize many folks love, love, love “Ragtime.” McDonald scored a personal triumph in it on Broadway. To some ears--mine, for starters--Stephen Flaherty’s score is the sound of a composer trying hard to write an important American musical, something loaded with heart and hits, rather than anything connecting the best of E.L. Doctorow’s novel--a gem of impudence, sardonic wit and distinction.

Other than that, I had a swell time. And Ms. McDonald and Ms. LuPone hit every single wrong note in Bernstein’s “Wrong Note Rag” wonderfully wrongly. Mauceri and the ladies who lunched on this material made a supremely accomplished trio.

It was a pleasure to hear so much vibrant theatrical music activated so joyously.