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Review: Liza's Back!

The Independent on Sunday, 7 April 2002

Pop review by Simon Price.

It's not often than I go to one of those shows where people start applauding songs two lines in, but this is Liza Minnelli, last in the line, the rat in the pack who still hasn't left the sinking ship, still belting them out in the ballroom even though the Titanic is listing to 45 degrees.

Flicking through the programme, scanning the pics of Liza with her famous friends, you find yourself thinking "Oh, he's dead, he's dead, he's dead... Burt Reynolds? Still alive. Gregory Peck? Not sure. Aznavour? Still hanging in there, I think..." Liza knows this. This is why she skitters out in floor-length white fur and immediately announces "LIZA'S BACK!", then launches into a song about how she's ditched the booze and pills, rhyming "flushed them away" with "went to AA".

Not that longevity in showbiz is ever enough. Happily, whatever Liza Minnelli ever had, she still has. She shtill shings like she's gotsh something in her mouth. She still wobbles unsteadily about the stage, a startled crow on Bambi legs, the hoofer who doesn't know where to put her hooves.

What keeps her going? Simple. The need to be loved, always present in performers, is extreme in her case. This, of course, is partly why, in the absence of her own mother, she is the ultimate Gay Icon. It isn't just her inherent fabulousness (tonight's outfits run from a black tinsel extravaganza to something that looks like she's murdered Big Bird and dyed him scarlet). It isn't just her delicious disregard for decency ("I don't care if the press is here," she says, wriggling into the basque-and-bowler combo for the inevitable Cabaret section, "Is the crotch OK on this outfit?"). It's the emotional open-ness in those please-love-me eyes. Liza Minnelli is intimate with everyone.

Everything is up for discussion. Much eyebrow-raised innuendo has been derived from the fact that her new husband (and promoter) David Gest is one of the world's foremost collectors of Judy Garland memorabilia, a fan (if not a friend) of Dorothy, and, as Richard Bacon recently pointed out, "he now has the ultimate item: her daughter". Liza herself can't shut up about her marriage, publicly snogging her groom at one point.

Tonight's set is a 50/50 split between showtunes and contemporary covers, including a bizarre version of Mary J Blige's "Family Affair", Liza taking the chorus, but, presumably uncomfortable with singing words like "hateration", "holleration" and "krunk", leaving the verses to Mary's original. She's happiest, though, when she's surrounded by dancers and belting out the standards ("New York New York", "Life Is A Cabaret"). For me, the highlight is the sublime, Pet Shop Boys-penned "Losing My Mind" (Neil Tennant, in Row 2, is beaming). But when she throws in a verse of "Over The Rainbow", the gay contingent is over the moon.

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