Home > Reviews > 1986 The London Palladium

Liza Minnelli

The Times, 10 March 1986

Review by David Sinclair.

It was of course a coincidence that Liza Minnelli opened her British season the same week that Frank Sinatra's version of Kander and Ebb's 'Theme from New York, New York' achieved its unlikely placing in the Top 10 singles chart, a coincidence which had not escaped Miss Minnelli's attention. The song, she declared, had been written by "my two best friends in the whole world, and they wrote it for me, specially for me". So saying, she proceeded to belt it out with the kind of vigour that one suspects would have left Sinatra a little breathless, even 3 years ago.

Proprietorial points at stake or not, the extraordinary energy and vivacious enthusiasm with which Minnelli broached her chosen material were, as ever, her most distinctive characteristics.

Wearing a beaded scarlet top and black skirt, she began with the Irving Berlin standard 'Blue Skies', which suffered rough treatment at the hands of a ruinous chicken-in-the-basket funk rhythm. A medley of sad songs packaged Vegas-style within a fragmented version of Elton John's 'Sad Songs (Say So Much)' fared little better.

But, where she had freer rein to impose her dominating personality on to material of a more specifically narrative nature, she presented a more engaging front. 'I've Cool to Get to London Town', the story of a travelling woman with gradually loosening morals, and her tale of Ella Finch, a compulsive shoplifter, were two of many witty and sharply observed vignettes that provided a loose theme for the show.

Despite the range of these characters - from her friend Angela with a "relationship" problem to the old marriage partner complaining 'You've Let Yourself Go' - they all ended up as another part of Liza Minnelli rather than vice versa. Be it the Mad Woman of Chaillot, or Mama Rose from Gypsy Lee, no matter what their origins, they all became the same brassy, streetwise, saddened but resilient survivor of bruising emotional battles; consistently more was learnt about the narrator than about the subjects.

The expected encore of 'Cabaret' was revealing for its slight but significant change of words, Minnelli making a very clear announcement that, unlike her friend in the song who died from too much pills and liquor, "when I go I'm not going like Elsie". And indeed, whatever Liza Minnelli does, she will doubtless do it like Liza Minnelli or not at all.

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