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There’s
nothing like the adrenaline kick of a
devotional audience. Even before she made
her entrance on the arm of Tony Danza, Liza
Minnelli had the sold-out Ziegfeld Theatre
in a dither. The seats were all reserved,
with name cards over the seat backs – JOAN
COLLINS, WHOOPI GOLDBERG, HARVEY WEINSTEIN,
ROSIE O’DONNELL – and whenever a celebrity
made a red carpet entrance into the
cavernous red-velvet-and-gold-swagged
theatre, the murmurs escalated. Is that her?
Is she here? The man behind us had run into
her in the ladies’ room – he was her
decorator – and the woman next to him was
Liza’s realtor for her first apartment on
Central Park South. Everyone in the audience
had a connection to the star, whether
personal or emotional, and more than a few
of them appeared to have been at the
original taping of LIZA WITH A Z at the
Lyceum Theatre on the 31st of May 1972 –
which was a date that appeared to hold as
much importance to them as the death of
Liza’s mother.
And then the cheers rang out and spotlights
popped and, row by row, the sold-out crowd
rose as Liza entered the house to take her
seat. Loud and long applause, it appeared to
be cathartic: relief that, at last, here she
was to take all of us back to that night in
1972 when a star became a legend.
Not all of us were old enough, or astute
enough, to have watched television on
September 10, 1972, when LIZA WITH A Z was
first aired. Maybe we missed it again the
second and final time it was aired a year
later. If you weren’t in the audience at the
Lyceum Theatre, those two airings would have
been your only chance to catch LIZA WITH A Z
because the show’s been in the vaults until
now – when, finally, it’s been restored and
remastered for Showtime and DVD.
So if you knew this show only from the title
song or the chart-topping soundtrack, or
knew only that LIZA WITH A Z had won four
Emmys, including Best Performance and Best
Director, as well as a Peabody Award, and
that Halston had done the costumes and Fosse
the choreography, and that Kander and Ebb
were involved, along with Marvin Hamlisch
and Phil Ramone, then you might be
understandably thrilled to finally, at long
last, see what all the buzz was about and
why this t.v. special has been so lauded and
loved.
From the moment she makes her entrance
silhouetted in black, wearing a white
Halston pantsuit with a white fox stole,
singing “Yes,” the Lyceum audience goes mad
– just as the Ziegfeld did last night. It
was nearly impossible to determine whether
the cheers and applause were emanating from
the soundtrack – or the audience all around
us. You’re looking at her face, that
beautifully iconic face, taking up the
entire screen, and you’re computing her age
– she celebrated sixty years the day before
this screening, which makes her – twenty-six
at the time of this concert. She’s in the
prime of her powers: supremely confident,
openly vulnerable, mistress of her body,
with no doubt whatsoever about her gifts and
her talent. And Fosse zooms in on that face,
letting us see every flicker of emotion in
those legendary eyes. And it’s no wonder
Fosse was awarded an Emmy – for his
direction of Liza’s version of “It Was A
Good Time” is nothing short of mesmerizing,
the equivalent of witnessing a nervous
breakdown in the course of a seven-minute
performance. To see Liza work this medley
number, with its bits of childhood lullabies
and spoken declarations, is to be reminded
of “Rose’s Turn” from Gypsy where a woman
confronts all the demons and disappointments
of life in an attempt to master their hold
over her psyche. In a matter of minutes,
Liza takes us through childhood and
adolescence and into adulthood, from a
wounded and vulnerable child, to a dutiful
daughter, to a young woman on the verge of
collapse, and all the while repeating the
mantras of survival, singing her way to what
she hopes will be strength and good health.
It’s nearly impossible to watch this one
number and not zoom forward from 1972, right
through to the present, and consider not
only Liza’s life, but your own, and be
reminded again how short the distance from
innocence to hard-earned wisdom. This is a
tour de force performance destined to remain
indelibly printed upon memory.
Similarly, Liza’s take on “God Bless the
Child” provokes a reconsideration of this
Billie Holiday staple, and of the import of
establishing one’s independence and
individuality in a world which would too
often attempt to squash difference. And to
see Liza romping through “I Gotcha” with its
idiosyncratic Fosse choreography is to
immediately recognize the antecedent of
nearly every music video, and particularly
those of Michael and Janet Jackson. By the
time Liza hits the stage in an incredibly
flattering black velvet knicker outfit with
a chorus of white-gloved dancers, it’s easy
to imagine that every musical theatre trope
has had its origins in this one television
special, and when she sings “My Mammy,”
full-throated, with an emotional power to
rival her mother and/or any other renowned
singer from the twentieth century, you can
understand why everyone in the Ziegfeld is
cheering and applauding, and quickly on
their feet.
The woman is a dynamo, a testament to the
beauty of baring your soul to let your
talents shine brighter – and after last
night’s screening of LIZA WITH A Z at the
Ziegfeld, you could be forgiven for
believing you’d witnessed the performance of
a lifetime.
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