Liza Minnelli at the Sydney Opera HouseReview by Claire Harvey
in the Sunday Telegraph
Sunday 18 October 2009http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sunday-telegraph/liza-minnelli-tour-blasts-off-at-the-opera-house/story-e6frewt9-1225787835378
Liza Minnelli at the Sydney Opera House
Friday 16 October 2009There are not many women in the world who could stride onto the Sydney Opera House stage wearing a white lame pantsuit, sing a song about the spelling of her own name and blast a crowd of squealing, screaming, adult men into the stratosphere.
Actually, there's only one woman who could do it.
It's Liza - with a Z - Minnelli and she has crowned herself queen of all the queens over two nights of sold-out shows, in which the crowd's enthusiasm was matched only by her own energy.
"I love you, Liza!'' bellowed a baritone voice from the crowd early in Friday night's show, just one of many manly swoons from hordes of fashionable young gay men, many wearing bow-ties or sparkly shoes, with a few middle-aged straight couples thrown in.
And Liza returned the love, with a series of show tunes, Vegas standards and her own greatest hits - including Liza With A Z and Cabaret, the theme from her 1972 film - delivered with all the sauciness of the original.
Nowadays, Minnelli shimmies in her chair, rather than doing the splits on top of it, and her diction is sometimes a little garbled, but she still delivers a compelling exhortation to embrace the world - life is a cabaret, old chum.
"Thank you, my friends, my family - wow!'' she said, during one of many ovations.
"Wow, the Sydney Opera House! I can't believe it. If any of you ever saw me before, you'll remember I used to sit down in the second act. Now I sit down in the first act,'' she said, dragging her chair to centre stage.
That was the extent of Liza's Sydney-specific banter - the show is a continuation of her Tony Award-winning run at New York's Palace Theatre and, at 63, Minnelli isn't up for major change.
The show's 14 numbers included a smoky version of Every Time We Say Goodbye, a showstopping New York, New York and a breathy My Own Best Friend from the musical Chicago.
There's a reason Minnelli is such a gay icon: her empathy for the political struggles of homosexual people rings through in songs like What Makes A Man A Man, by Charles Aznavour, underlaid by a smooth clarinet from her fault-free orchestra of 12.
For her encore, Minnelli returned in baggy T-shirt, slippers and a towel, scrubbed her face of make-up and delivered All The Lives Of Me, a song by her ex-husband Peter Allen.
"Thank you, Peter,'' she said, and slithered off in her slippers, a hoofer to the last.
