MORE ON 'Liza's at the Palace...!' To Godmother, Old Chum

By STEVEN HOLDEN
Published: December 5, 2008
I wish I had met Kay Thompson, the creative whirlwind who inspirits the second act of Liza Minnelli’s new show, “Liza’s at the Palace ...,” or simply had the chance to sit at her feet and absorb her presence. From the moment Ms. Minnelli joins forces with a male singing and dancing quartet to resurrect parts of a famous nightclub act Thompson created in the late 1940s and early ’50s with the Williams Brothers, the Palace Theater blasts off into orbit.

Michael Falco for The New York Times
Resurrecting parts of a nightclub act from the 1940s and ’50s: Liza Minnelli at the Palace with a singing and dancing quartet.
There it remains, deliriously spinning until the end of a 2-hour-20-minute show (with intermission) that leaves the star in a state of breathless exaltation. The end of the opening-night show on Wednesday found Ms. Minnelli panting, drenched in sweat, her hair matted, as if she had just finished running the New York marathon, which in a sense she had.
Thompson, Ms. Minnelli’s godmother and a pal of Judy Garland’s, died in 1998. But Thompson, also the author of the “Eloise” books, can be glimpsed via YouTube.com as an elegantly dizzy dame cavorting in production numbers from vintage TV variety shows. In the 1957 movie “Funny Face,” her character, a fashion magazine editor who suggests a hybrid of Auntie Mame and Diana Vreeland, sings and dances and nearly steals the movie from Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire. But Ms. Minnelli’s tribute to a woman she calls her “sophisticated fairy godmother” soundly trumps everything I’ve seen of Thompson.
But even in today’s climate of omnivorous video recording, it is useful to remember that nightclub acts remain evanescent, word-of-mouth events, percolating under the cultural radar. So who knows how accurate these re-creations may be?
It is enough to say that beginning with Thompson’s song “Jubilee Time” and running through “I Love a Violin,” Ms. Minnelli and the quartet execute production numbers that are the last word in modern pop-jazz virtuosity from an era when the term modern meant sleek, cool, jet-propelled sophistication. Clad in identical black suits, white shirts and skinny ties, delivering impeccable, jazz-inflected barbershop harmonies as they swoop and glide, Johnny Rodgers, Cortes Alexander, Jim Caruso and Tiger Martina perform astounding feats of singing and dancing coordination. They are assisted on the piano by Billy Stritch, who breaks in to provide creamy vocal fills.
Their mile-a-minute rendition of the Gershwins’ “Clap Yo’ Hands” has the furious velocity and compression of a jazz-flavored rap. The director Ron Lewis’s choreography belongs to the vintage variety-show sort, but is stripped of clichés to the point that it transmits joy and enthusiasm to the audience like an electric charge.
I would love to report that Ms. Minnelli’s voice and physical agility have been magically restored to their former glory, but those days seem to be gone. On Wednesday night her voice was in tatters, her diction unsteady. When she belted, her wide vibrato wobbled to the breaking point. Most of her s’s were slurred sh’s. Frequently short of breath, she swallowed phrases. Many of her highest notes were dry, piercing caws.
But there were still occasional moments of beautifully focused dramatic singing. She wrung every drop of emotion from “He’s Funny That Way,” turning the phrase “crazy for me” into a sweetly exultant cry.
As for movement, there were no kicks or even half-kicks, although Ms. Minnelli can still strut stealthily and sprawl across a director’s chair in sensual abandon. She moved mostly from above the waist, where her signature gestures were intact: an arm flung upward, a flutter of fingers frantically beckoning the audience to “come to the cabaret.”
Once the show began to soar, though, Ms. Minnelli’s force of will became a triumph of spirit over flesh. As she insisted on doing what she can no longer do, her audacity was inspiring: her message was you do the best you can, and if you have to, fake it. She trusted the listener’s imagination to fill in the blanks.
Ms. Minnelli’s stage philosophy, after all, comes from the perspective of someone who grew up in a show business bubble and may never have questioned that life is a never-ending performance starring oneself. Within that bubble, catchphrases like “life is a cabaret, old chum,” and “the show must go on” make perfect sense and become poignant imperatives. As the years pass, Ms. Minnelli, now 62, seems increasingly aware that she is one of the last of a hardy vaudeville breed and the foremost custodian of that tradition. The high point of the first act was a revised version of a vaudeville tribute her mother performed at the Palace.
A pure entertainer like Ms. Minnelli — and there is none purer — is at once voracious and extravagantly generous. If you’re onstage 24 hours a day, you have no choice but to give life everything you’ve got. That was a belief Thompson instilled in her, Ms. Minnelli declared, as if it were gospel arriving from on high.
LIZA’S AT THE PALACE ...
By Liza Minnelli and David Zippel; directed and choreographed by Ron Lewis; conducted by Michael Berkowitz; musical supervisor, Billy Stritch; sets by Ray Klausen; costumes by Roy Frowick Halston; lighting by Matt Berman; sound by Matt Krauss. Presented by John Scher/Metropolitan Talent Presents and Jubilee Time Productions. At the Palace Theater, Broadway at 47th Street; (212) 307-4100. Through Dec. 28. Running time: 2 hours.
WITH: Liza Minnelli; Cortes Alexander, Jim Caruso, Tiger Martina and Johnny Rodgers.