Liza’s At The Palace
Not every man swoons at the mere sight of Liza Minnelli crooning a show tune. But if you’re reading this review, it’s a safe bet you’re a gay who has a soft spot for that mess-in-a-dress daughter of Judy Garland we all know as "Liza."
Converts will drool--and skeptics may even come to appreciate her--after viewing Liza’s at the Palace. Shot at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on October 1, 2009, it’s a fairly faithful rendition of a Broadway gig at the Palace Theater in New York in December 2008. For that, she won her a Tony Award (which she totally deserved!) for Best Special Theatrical Event.
One factor the skeptics might appreciate is the lack of Liza standards like "Some People" and "Ring Them Bells"---hoary old chestnuts in the Minnelli stable that have made her the stuff of parody. But Liza still manages to leave the door to her past open just a crack.
You won’t walk away disappointed that she didn’t do "Cabaret" or "New York, New York." Happily, these numbers are performed with a freshness and vitality only Liza can deliver after singing them, presumably, many thousands of times.
She veers off into uncharted territory via some lesser-known selections, such as "But the World Goes Round" and the Charles Aznavour gay rights cabaret tune "What Makes a Man a Man." In the latter number, you get Liza playing a gay man who works as a trans cabaret performer in Paris and gets hassled by the locals for being a gay man. It’s a trippy moment of fag hag empathy that cuts to the core of why this woman is a queer icon.
Later, you even get the story of how Liza convinced Bob Fosse to let her temporarily replace Gwen Verdon in "Chicago."
The unique meat of the show, however, is Act II, when Liza recalls her childhood mentor and Godmother, Kay Thompson. She then proceeds to recreate Thompson’s legendary nightclub act at Ciro’s (from which no video or recordings remain; just still photographs).
For this, Liza is joined by a quartet of NYC cabaret vets who recreate The Williams Brothers (included in that group was a guy we’d soon come to know as Andy Williams).
Here, in the second act, there’s an endearing sincerity to her patter. Despite the fact you know it’s rehashed nightly, her tales come off as fresh and genuine. That’s because, like Liza, those stories are genuinely touching, utterly unique, and hell-bent on pleasing you. What more can we expect from our entertainers?
Extras on the DVD include a 45-minute "heart to heart" conversation between Liza and her director/choreographer Ron Lewis. The breezy between-friends recollection lets us listen in on putting the show together. Liza recalls a pitch meeting with a record exec during which she begins pitching a Kay Thompson tribute record and ends up with the idea that would become "Liza’s at the Palace."
You’ll learn what numbers were cut, and a he said/she said section where each gives their own recollection of the first conversation they had about the show.
Watch this extra after seeing the whole performance. That way, you’ll get the most out of the two chatty, chummy friends and collaborators dishing on the backstory of how they created the show. That’s ironic, considering that the show itself invests quite a bit of time giving you backstory on everything from Kay Thompson’s mentoring of Liza to the time when Judy and Kay saw an early stage performance of Liza’s.
It’s pure showbiz schmaltz; and you’re going to eat it up, just like the performance itself.
