Lauper and friends move audience with message and music

Founded last year by Cyndi Lauper to raise awareness and encourage support of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender equality, True Colors has expanded this year from 15 to 24 dates and added a welcome assortment of performers to the lineup. And even though the event felt less politicized this time around - Lauper asked concertgoers to vote but left the verbiage at that - True Colors' ideals of freedom and diversity were once again underscored by each artist's embrace of his or her unique muse.

Well, maybe not every artist. Kat DeLuna belted a few undistinguished club tracks to open the show. But Lauper was an inspiration - the kitschy '80s icon who might have been voted Least Likely to Mature Gracefully has become not just a vocal supporter of important causes but an enduring musical presence who follows her sense of adventure from style to style, fashion be damned. In a striped, flowing pants suit and phenomenally strong voice, Lauper performed a handful of tracks from her idiosyncratic new dance record, "Bring Ya to the Brink," and careened through the best-loved sections of her back catalog: "Time After Time," "I Drove All Night," "She-Bop," "Change of Heart," and an arena-caliber cover of Prince's "When You Were Mine." Cliks frontman Lucas Silveira appeared for a feisty duet on "Money Changes Everything" and Rosie O' Donnell bashed happily on a little drum kit during "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," while the whole lineup closed the nearly five-hour concert with a galvanizing singalong of the tour's namesake song.

O'Donnell's stand-up set was a strange mash. The comedian/talk-show host/blogger/activist - a polyglot lightning rod of an entertainer who ID'd herself out of the gate as Parade magazine's Most Annoying Celebrity of 2007 - wove somber reflections about losing her mother as a child with signature dry commentary about "The View" ("a cute little tea-party talk show that turned into a prison film") and gay parenthood (her tween daughter Chelsea wants to know why she has two mommies and neither has high heels). "The only thing that matters in your life is forgiveness," were O'Donnell's parting words in a monologue that was short on gut-busting laughs but surprisingly long on poignancy.