LuPone, Patinkin and some great theater

Restraint is not the first word one expects to use when describing either Patti LuPone or Mandy Patinkin. Conventional discipline and delicate taste are not qualities that have defined the mid-careers of these singing actors with their boulder-size proportions of talent, temperament and, some days, emotional excess.

But take the floor bolts out of the furniture and the bars of the windows. "An Evening With Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin" is glorious -- an intimate, affectionate, restrained but never boring lovefest between great old friends and great musical theater.

The two-hour concert, which the pair has sporadically performed around the country, has settled on Broadway through Jan. 13 as if it belongs there forever. There is no plot, just a piano and a string bass and some colored ghost lights on poles. Except for Patinkin's memories of their Tony-winning debuts in the 1979 "Evita" (he does a passionate "Oh What a Circus," she a hauntingly quiet "Don't Cry for Me Argentina"), there is no chatter.

The song list is bliss -- plenty from Stephen Sondheim, and Rodgers and Hammerstein works that the duo is too old now to get cast in, with spots of novelty, ingeniously overlapping medleys and just enough recap of their hits we feared we'd never hear them sing, or sing this well, again.

And they are both in wonderful voice, individually and in ravishing blends, ice-picking high notes without drawing attention to technique. Both are rapid-patter virtuosos. She, no longer swooping or smearing into notes, meticulously articulates every bullet-fast word in "Getting Married Today." He, no longer overdoing the falsetto part of his freaky wonder of a voice, delivers all the scary-good vaudeville characters of "Buddy's Blues."

She sings "Everything's Coming Up Roses" with the freshness of someone who hadn't repeated it eight times a week for years. Although nobody is ever going to buy him as a debonair French plantation owner or her as a hick buttercup, they bring their own peculiar rightness to a series from "South Pacific."

Patinkin, who co-created the show with his invaluable pianist Paul Ford and also directs, genuinely seems to adore showing LuPone off. They joke through a sweet ballet on rolling desk chairs. The show starts with Sondheim's "Another Hundred People," about New York being "a city of strangers." Not at the Barrymore it isn't.

WHAT "An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin"

WHERE Barrymore Theatre, 243 W. 47th St.

INFO $76.50-$131.50; 212-239-6200; pattiandmandyonbroadway.com

BOTTOM LINE Great friends, great musical theater