LuPone Echoes Merman’s Verve

“I could have been Mary Martin, Cathy Rigby or Sandy Duncan,” said Patti LuPone, “but no--you all made me Ethel Merman.”

LuPone was speaking to the Saturday night crowd at the Hollywood Bowl, and the comment came in her introduction of a song associated with those other stars--”Never Never Land” from “Peter Pan.”

As the song ended, LuPone raised her arms in a triumphant gesture that looked uncannily like her own big moment in “Evita”--as if Eva Peron was one of the Lost Boys. It seemed jarring, until she introduced the next song--”Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina,” from “Evita.” So the gesture at the end of “Never Never Land” was probably an intentional segue.

Maybe it was also a sly comment on the title of her part of the program: “Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda ... “ The phrase refers to songs that she wishes she had sung in musicals. But as the “Never Never Land” gesture indicated, it might be difficult for LuPone to venture far from her brassy, Merman-esque image for any extended length of time.

Especially in the vast reaches of the Bowl. No matter how much LuPone may want to try on other hats, this is no place for her to play a wallflower. So she dressed in a bright magenta gown that probably could be seen from San Diego, and she commandeered the stage with her usual authority in movement and voice.

Some of the “Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda” songs fit her familiar personality well. The program’s most unexpected pleasure was “Soliloquy,” which is usually sung by a big, blustery man in “Carousel.” LuPone’s easy swagger was fully comfortable with the first part of the song, and she brought a sense of discovery to its later chapters.

When she sang “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” you could see that LuPone might have been a formidable competitor to Barbra Streisand in the auditions for “Funny Girl,” if she had been born just a few years earlier.

The song that fit her persona the least: “An English Teacher” from “Bye Bye Birdie.” LuPone as a woman who would settle for being Mrs. Albert Peterson? I think not.

She sauntered through “A Wonderful Guy” from “South Pacific,” using a surprisingly relaxed, loping arrangement, then also resisted the temptation to go over the top in “Easy to Be Hard” from “Hair.” Besides “Argentina,” she performed another song that is associated with her: “Meadowlark” from “The Baker’s Wife.” She tackled the roles of Anita and Maria in “A Boy Like That” from “West Side Story” and ended her regular set with the appropriately assertive “I Was Here.”

For encores, she paid tribute to Stevie Wonder with “It’s Magic” and sang “The Way You Look Tonight” with an unusual ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll beat.

Conducted by Rob Fisher, music director of New York’s Encores!, the Los Angeles Philharmonic provided lustrous accompaniment. Before intermission, the orchestra performed the overture from “Funny Girl,” “Cloudburst” from “The Grand Canyon Suite” and a number of songs from “Sweeney Todd,” which elicited a kitschy red glow on the Bowl’s dome, in recognition of the blood shed by the show’s Demon Barber.