Liza With a "Z": A Concert for Television

An appropriately glittery box contains Showtime's DVD and CD Liza With a "Z," Michael Arick's restoration and remastering of the award-winning 1972 telecast. My readers will know that my problems with Ms. Minnelli run from A to Z, but for her fans, this release-a six-year Herculean labor of Arick's love-should prove manna from heaven.

The telecast, directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse, originated innovatively from the Lyceum Theatre. Fosse clearly wanted the festive atmosphere of a Broadway opening night with a fashionable audience, and not that of a grimy studio and sweaty work clothes. The idea paid off. Everything clicked, and the gala audience applauded, cheered and rose to their feet with synchronicity the Rockettes would have envied.

With the guardian angels Kander and Ebb hovering over the proceedings, the show began with a rousing rendition of one of their strong numbers, "Yes," and ended with a medley from "Cabaret," whose recently seen Oscar-winning movie version skyrocketed Liza and Fosse to worldwide fame. The songwriting team also just composed the zippy title song "Liza With a 'Z'" in three hours, which Liza learned in no time flat. And there were further Kander & Ebb items in the show, all to the good.

For non-fans, there are one of Fosse's finest choreographies, featuring some skilled Fosse dancers, some glitzy Halston costumes and fanciful cinematography by Owen Roizman, with eight 16-mm. cameras vying to give you Liza from every conceivable angle, from worm's- to bird's-eye and beyond.

At age 26, Liza was only beginning to caricature herself, and her singing and dancing were accomplished enough. What militated against her was-is-her voracious compulsion to please, a performance consisting of almost wall-to-wall Sally Field moments. Disturbing, too, was her make-up, giving her face a celluloid-doll look, with hypertrophic eyelashes dispersing in all directions from eyes glistening like shiny marbles. Any moment, one feared, they would spill from their sockets and trip up the dancers.

[IMG:R]The DVD's addenda include an unfortunate symposium with Liza and her producers at the 2005 Toronto Film Festival, where Showtime premiered the restoration. Unhelped by sixtyish Liza's truck-driver laugh and postwomanly girlishness, the event included a Q&A where every questioner, of whatever sex, seemed to come from a freak show.

This may be the answer to Liza's vast androgynous appeal. There is something outré, even outrageous, enough about her to make her a patron saint to every real or imagined misfit and outcast. It was detectably nascent already in the TV special: the camera, singly, can perhaps be made to lie; eightfold, it cannot even prevaricate.

There is, among the dubious assets of the DVD, one true bonus. It is a fairly recent conversation between Liza and John Kander, he sitting at the keyboard and occasionally strumming, she leaning on the piano. The things said shed some useful light, and the mutual affection exuded is genuinely affecting.

Otherwise, though, the best I can say for Liza is that she is or was almost as good as the immense brood of impersonators she has spawned.

You can read John Simon on Theatre every weekend at www.bloomberg.com