Liza's at The Palace.... Blu-ray delivers great video and audio in this excellent Blu-ray release
The full two-hour performance of Liza Minnelli's 2009 concert was recorded at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on October 1, 2009. Act One features favorite songs by Ms. Minnelli, including the Palace Medley, originally sung by her mother, Judy Garland, at the Palace Theatre in 1951. Act Two is a tribute to Liza's godmother, Kay Thompson, a groundbreaking singer-dancer, songwriter, and vocal arranger/coach at the MGM studios in the 1940s.
Many show business legends have spent years in tabloid hell, often deservedly. From her very
birth, Liza Minnelli seemed destined for gossip columns and late-night talk show punchlines. The daughter
of Judy Garland, a beloved star of stage and screen who was legendary for a tempestuous
personal life, Minnelli often seemed to be competing with her famous "Mama" for attention,
adulation, show business achievement (an Oscar, an Emmy, a Grammy and three Tony Awards)
substance abuse and a personal life that routinely threatened to eclipse her accomplishments. In
2007, after the very public break-up of her marriage (Minnelli's fourth) to promoter David Guest,
Minnelli appeared to have reached the nadir of her career.
But never count out a talented diva with fierce ambition and a loyal fan base (and not just among
gay men). Minnelli came roaring back in December 2008 with the kind of special event on
Broadway that routinely sells out at the holiday season, when New York City is bustling with
visitors. The show was called Liza's at the Palace, because it played at the Palace Theatre on
Broadway, where Minnelli had performed her previous one-woman show, Minnelli on Minnelli,
directed by the late Fred Ebb (of "Kander & Ebb", creators of Cabaret and
Chicago). But this
show was a little different. It was more directly autobiographical, more wistful about the passage
of time, above all more candid (though not apologetic) about the fact that everyone knew her
most intimate secrets. Or did they? In Act II of Liza's at the Palace, its star shares stories
with
her audience that the tabloids never covered.
The Broadway show was a limited engagement, but the production went on to Las Vegas, where, on
October 1, 2009, the performance was recorded at the MGM Grand and subsequently released on DVD
and Blu-ray.
The stage is largely bare, with the orchestra at the back under the direction of Minnelli's long-time
accompanist, piano man Billy Stritch. Alone in the first act, often accompanied by an
elegant quartet of male dancers in the second, Liza puts out a steady stream of energy for a
woman aged 65. (Minnelli never gives the exact figure, but the show is laced with age jokes.)
There are plenty of references to her recent divorce, but what's remarkable is how knowing and
indirect they are. One of the few advantages of having your personal life splashed across
newspapers, TV and the internet is that the entire audience becomes your best friend. A nod and
a wink is all you need to put across the punchline. When Minnelli performs "If You Hadn't, But
You Did", a song by Kander & Ebb about a woman who guns down her philandering man, she
introduces it by saying that she knows just how the lady feels. The crowd eats it up.
Act II is a tribute to Minnelli's godmother, Kay Thompson, singer, songwriter, vocal coach, film
actress (Funny Face), night club performer, creator of the Eloise books and show
business
mentor to Minnelli, Andy Williams and others. In between recreating some of Thompson's
signature routines with the Williams Brothers at Ciro's in Hollywood, Minnelli relates an array
of poignant tales: sitting in her mother's lap at age 2 watching Thompson perform; having to tell
Thompson on the phone that her mother had died; Thompson's extravagant notion for
redecorating a bedroom (the tale may be apocryphal, but it says a lot about the person); the last
words she exchanged with Thompson, who by then was sharing Minnelli's apartment in
Manhattan. Parodies of Minnelli, of which there are many, routinely have her reflexively
invoking her mother's spirit, but after hearing and seeing how much inspiration she drew and still
draws from Thompson (who also, according to Minnelli, taught her famous mother how to sing),
it's clear those parodies missed the mark.
Minnelli looks good for her age, and she still has the graceful moves of the dancer who brought
Sally Bowles so memorably to life in Cabaret. But the show has obviously been arranged to
accommodate her reduced stamina, and when she pauses between numbers, you catch glimpses
of the toll that years of hard living have taken on a finally tuned instrument. Still, as Kay
Thompson said of Garland, she did what she wanted and had a blast. It shows.
The complete song list is as follows:
Act 1
The 1080i, AVC-encoded Blu-ray from MPI is sharp and detailed, allowing you to see each
individual sequin on Minnelli's costumes. Despite the interlaced format, there is no visible
flickering or combing while the image is in motion (screencaps are a different matter). Blacks are
deep and solid, which is crucial for the lighting design of this show, where Minnelli is often
isolated in light surrounded by darkness. The color scheme is simple, but the colors are bright
without being fluorescent or Vegas-flashy. This being a disc from MPI and not Image, we get a
BD-50 and don't have to give compression artifacts a second thought.
The 5.1 mix presented in DTS lossless uses the discrete format conservatively. Even the audience
applause and cheering are relatively quiet in the surrounds, so that the focus of the soundtrack
remains toward the front. Whether singing or speaking, Minnelli's voice has been recorded with
perfect clarity, down to the slightest catch or crack (all of them undoubtedly deliberate and for
effect). Billy Stritch's piano and the accompanying orchestra are always audible, but discreetly
so, because the voice is the star here. Bass extension is unusually strong for a track of this sort,
but not so strong that you're pulled away from the headliner.
"Heart-to-Heart Conversation Between Liza and Director/Choreographer
Ron Lewis (HD; 1.78:1; 47:35): Taped on Oct. 2, 2009, the day after the
performance, Minnelli and Lewis range widely over the history of the show and
its development. Some of the points are matters of detail, for example, the
decision to open Act II with "And the World Goes 'Round" (from Cabaret) to get
the audience's energy back up before launching into the stories about Kay
Thompson. Some are major, like the original inspiration for the show, which was
a fluke; Minnelli was trying to interest a record company executive in an album of
Thompson's songs, and when he seemed uninterested, she invented a fictitious
show she was planning about her godmother as an excuse for playing him the
songs.
As entertainment continues to move further from live performance, there will be fewer and fewer
stars with that indefinable quality known as "presence", the ability to electrify a room and
command the attention of a thousand or more people simultaneously. Whatever else she may be,
Liza Minnelli belongs to that rare breed, and Liza's at the Palace, while not quite the same as
sitting in the audience while she performs, brings you as close to the experience as a recording
can. Recommended.
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