In her very last song Friday night, Broadway star Patti LuPone left her Omaha audience with a lasting echo of an affection for Midlanders that she first cultivated 40 years ago.

LuPone's set list for her "The Gypsy In My Soul" program included two possible encores. She and pianist/musical director Joseph Thalken did four. Then, as people kept applauding on their way up the aisles, LuPone walked out once more, stopped them in their tracks with one finger and sang Frank Sinatra's "A Hundred Years From Today" — endearingly unaccompanied and unamplified.

The Holland Performing Arts Center crowd stood transfixed, absorbing an intimate musical encounter neither performer nor audience easily forgets. It followed several occasions in which LuPone, Broadway's original "Evita," spiced her enticingly diverse two-hour set with tales of Nebraska experiences.

After a sultry rendition of "I Get a Kick Out of You," for example, LuPone recalled how she had toured 50 out of 52 weeks a year in the mid-1970s with the legendary John Houseman's Acting Company. A blizzard stranded them for three days at the former Holiday Inn "in North Platte on the way to Alliance," where "there were people sleeping in the lobby and we ran out of food." Then she exclaimed: "WE HAD A BALL!"

After a soulful duet with Thalken on "Sleepy Man" from her show "The Robber Bridegroom," LuPone returned to the theme. "You come to places that appreciate art, dance, music, theater, and it's a different quality of audience," she said. "I've said for 40 years: I appreciate the Midwest."

LuPone, now 62, rewarded the audience's enthusiasm with generous musical helpings from the Great American Songbook. In the second act, she recapped her best-known Broadway songs, including "Don't Cry for Me Argentina," the powerful anthem from "Evita" that helped her win her first Tony in 1979.

Before belting out "Everything's Coming Up Roses" from "Gypsy" — which won her a second Tony in 2008 — she declared, "When I was 15 on Long Island, I got to play Louise in 'Gypsy.' And just recently, I got to play Rose."

Throughout her show, LuPone tapped a deep reservoir of vocal colorations and expressive performing styles. She enthralled the audience with an achingly longing medley of "Calling You," featured in the movie "Bagdad Cafe," and the Oleta Adams ballad "Get Here."

She memorably tapped her comedic side in describing the lasting impression "West Side Story" made on her as a girl. "I could have played TWO of those parts!" she proclaimed, then launched into "A Boy Like That," switching rapid-fire between the bitter Anita and the pleading Maria.

It's unfortunate that LuPone was scheduled for only a one-night stand — though one could easily see her and Thalken borrowing a piano in some Omaha club if this weekend's snowstorm strands her in Nebraska yet again.