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Drugs, booze, marriages but on stage the professional--loving, and loved by, the audience, numerous comebacks--talking about Judy or Liza or both???
Liza Minnelli, Nottingham Royal Concert Hall, Friday May
30.
30.
"Do you notice anything different about me?"
asked Liza Minnelli after her third number, sucking in her cheeks and pouting
for comic effect. Having recently shed 44 pounds in weight (apparently thanks to
a diet program that she had seen advertised on television), the 62-year old diva
looked in amazing shape: trim, toned, in radiant good health, and (as we were to
discover during the second half) sporting a pair of legs that would have graced
a woman half her age.
But it wasn't only Liza's outward appearance which
confounded expectations. Not quite knowing what to expect from someone with such
a chequered history and such an erratic track record, many of us had come
prepared to make allowances for whatever eccentricities might be in store. As it
turned out, we had no need to worry at all.
From the first number (a
splendid rendition of Teach Me Tonight) to the final encore (a
spellbinding I'll Be Seeing You, performed a cappella), Liza was in full
control of her voice, her performance and her audience. Every note was hit;
every mark was struck; every nuance was attended to.
This was no
booze-addled, pill-popping, delusional spent force, hamming it up and trading on
past glories. Instead, what we witnessed was a bravura performance from a
consummate artiste, miraculously restored to the height of her powers.
As
was explained during a recent interview, Liza's preferred interpretive technique
is to inhabit a different character for each song: a "method acting breakdown",
as she called it. During the first half in particular, we saw this technique in
full effect.
For George Gershwin's The Man I Love, Minnelli's
lovelorn yearning was underpinned by a self-mocking wryness, as was only
appropriate for a woman four times divorced. Taking an opposite stance, I'm
Living Alone And I Like It was sung in the character of a feisty old lady
dressed from head to toe in maroon, whom the singer had once met on a New York
street corner. For My Own Best Friend (from the musical Chicago),
Minnelli transformed into Roxie Hart: on trial for murder, and converting her
fear into defiance. And for Cabaret, she once again assumed her
Oscar-winning role as Sally Bowles in the film of the same name: laughing in the
face of misfortune, with a survivor's resolve to continue living life to the
full.
The bulk of the show's second half was given over to an extended
tribute to Liza's late godmother Kay Thompson: a key figure in the history of
Hollywood, who had given vocal coaching to the likes of Fred Astaire, Frank
Sinatra, and Liza's own mother Judy Garland. Given that Thompson is a
considerably lesser known figure in this country, this was a section that could
easily have flopped. Instead, the lively, full-throttle recreation of her
celebrated nightclub act, accompanied by a quartet of song-and-dance boys (The
Williams Brothers), swept us up with its sheer energy, successfully evoking the
spirit of a lost golden age.
As the two and a half hour show progressed,
the standing ovations grew ever more frequent: starting with Maybe This
Time in the first half, and climaxing with Minnelli's signature tune New
York, New York in the second half. (By this stage, the cheers were erupting
even as the song progressed.) Liza rode these waves of adulation in the manner
of someone whose stardom is written in their very DNA.
Let there be no
doubt about it: this was a truly exceptional show, which will be remembered for
years to come by all who witnessed it.
