LuPone and Patinkin: Less fire, more flame

This isn't the first time An Evening With Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin has settled in to melt any winter ice still resisting the pair's warmth. Their affectionate musical revue is currently at Wilmington's DuPont Theatre, but in 2007 they visited the Prince Music Theater with the same act: a Broadway fetishist's fantasy featuring Stephen Sondheim, Rodgers and Hammerstein, some Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber (Patinkin and LuPone originated the roles of Che and Eva in Evita), and just about every other major songwriter/composer to have helped light the Great White Way between 1940 and 1980.

The difference this time out? Less fire, more flame. The earlier season saw Patinkin and LuPone burning up the stage with a rebel spirit and schmaltz so thick you could spread it on pumpernickel. At the tighter DuPont, with LuPone fresh off her Tony win as Mama Rose in the recent Gypsy revival, they're downright reflective.

Though LuPone still relies on her tongue trippingly forward-rushing style, and Patinkin ain't too proud to whip out his hot-cha-cha - especially during Follies' "The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues" - it's balanced by a sweetness that even had LuPone repeatedly dabbing at her eyes with a tissue (pulled from her bosom, of course). This sense of intimacy is assisted by sound levels set to a volume that sounds like actual human beings singing to one another, helping the production charm like a cozy cabaret, instead of wowing like a concert.

Conceived by Patinkin and his longtime accompanist, Paul Ford, the show examines just about every type of love from every angle, except the kind that's for sale (sorry folks, no Cole Porter on the list). Where just one musical will suffice - Merrily We Roll Along, for example - a half-dozen or so of its love songs appear in a row, connected by banter from the script. Others make a naturally logical pairing (70, Girls, 70's "Old Folks" is followed by Gypsy's "Some People," both about defying convention).

And all give LuPone and Patinkin the chance to make eyes at each other and make the tunes their own, accompanied only by Ford on piano and John Beal on bass.

LuPone is an unlikely ingenue as South Pacific's Nellie Forbush or Carousel's Julie Jordan (an illusion not helped by her awful first-act outfit, a navy blouse with tiered flaps that makes her look as if she's segmented, paired with - yikes! - black culottes). But the two repurpose their lyrics, endowing the songs with the weight and hesitancy of love the second time around. When LuPone sings "Cockeyed Optimist" to Patinkin, it loses its naivete and becomes an ode to stubborn determination.

Only the show's Evita segment is dissonant enough to feel as if it was tacked on as a crowd-pleaser. Of course, it's probably impossible for Patinkin and LuPone to set out together for the first time in a quarter-century and leave Evita behind - but it says something about their rapport that if they really wanted to, they could.

Music Review

An Evening With Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin

Through Sunday, at the DuPont Theatre, Wilmington. Tickets: $55-$65. 800-338-0881 or www.duponttheatre.org.