LIBERACE & LIZA
Old enough to remember seeing Liberace on our black and white TV as a child, I clearly remember the fascination that this outrageous explosion of sequins, fur, jewels and that candelabra stirred in me. And am I right in remembering dancing fountains in the background? Liberace was certainly a spectacle and maybe even spectacular.
Some years later at the grammar school the film society screened Cabaret and I encountered Liza Minelli (the content of the film with explicit homosexuality caused quite a stir in the staff room and questions were raised about suitability for teenage boys). I lapped it up! At 14 I was hooked on glitter, glamour and a burgeoning sense that I was not like most of the other boys.
Fifty six years later I am sat in the theatre awaiting the arrival of the two iconic figures that so fascinated me as a boy. Characters so vivid, so imprinted not only in my memory but in far more recent exposures, who could forget Michael Douglas bravely taking on the role in Beyond The Candelabra and telling the seedy story behind those sequins or the American TV spectaculars that Liza created. Who has the chutzpah and the talent to create them live on stage?
Well David Saffert & Jillian Snow certainly do and they can in a non-stop feast of campery, comedy and musical mastery. Liberace was a phenomenally talented pianist, he could, in his own inimitable style, hammer out the classics, musical theatre, pop, stride, honky tonk, jazz and often mash the whole lot together. He could race up and down a keyboard at speed, littering the whole with trills and musical trinkets as he went. Saffert effortlessly can do the same. It take a very fine musician to pull this off and he is very fine indeed. Add to this the fixed rictus smile, the carefully coiffured wig and the costumes, red sequins in the first half, lace frills at every opportunity, and in part two more sequins of course but this time a star spangled banner of cowboy excess with fringes at every opportunity. Nothing is spared visually, including some rather short shorts!
He appears first and displays his fine talents at his (electronic) candelabra bedecked grand piano. The voice is bob on, he looks and sounds every bit like Liberace.
Snow appears next in a black sequinned pant suit as it would be called across the pond. It is an extraordinary vision, Minelli in her prime, feisty and fierce and barely able to utter a word without bursting into fits of that very odd laugh. The hair, the eyes, the costume though are only part of the illusion. It is the physicality of her presence that is so mesmerisingly accurate, yes, exaggerated for sure, but done with such dexterity and such brilliant comic timing.
All this is so good and then she sings and wow, every tonal trait, every point of phrasing perfection, the range, the power, the… well you must by now be getting the picture that this is a stunning piece of theatre.
And of course it has to be funny, the characters are there and their stories in part unfold, their mothers, their relationships, her failed marriages and his closeted lifestyle. There is so much material out there for them to play with and play they do. But the whole is done with a lot of respect, it could dwell on both their addictions to booze and drugs, but it doesn’t, it could dwell on his obsession with plastic surgery, his promiscuity and his eventual and tragic death from AIDS and the media circus that followed, but it doesn’t.
Musically the show is masterful, his playing immaculate, her voice stunning, and the song choices are hilarious, we get Over The Rainbow, Cabaret and Losing My Mind of course, but no one was expecting a bit of Spice Girls or Britney! And the comedy is razor sharp, at moments dangerously so.
A packed house rose to its feet and were rewarded with two encores.
I have been accused of late of being profligate with my scattering of stars, not that I care, and on Saturday I tried get the tech to let me award six stars to a show. I failed, or should I say it failed me. This time I will give it the maximum of five, but believe me when I say that it deserves ten. So when you see those five down below, read it as five each, five for David, five for Jillian and in total ten.
Andrew Kay
6 May
Ironworks Studios
Rating:
