Liza Minnelli’s Hollywood Bowl performance gets a wonderful review in Los Angeles Times

Saturday night’s Liza Minnelli concert at Hollywood Bowl was quite an experience for everyone there and Los Angeles Times theater critic Charles McNulty really does a stellar job of capturing the evening in his review of the evening in today’s paper.

Here are some excerpts:

Minnelli might not have been in the best voice, but she sang incredibly movingly, laying bare the emotional ache and awe that inspired her set of songs to be written in the first place.

*****

The best theatrical singers understand lyrics the way the best actors understand characters — as something to inhabit, live through. And Minnelli has a gift for magnifying lyrical feelings that have an obvious resonance with her life and career. When singing about setbacks, comebacks and all forms or resiliency, especially of the romantic kind, she became a Method performer, reopening old wounds and transforming the pain into poignant pizazz.

*****

Minnelli’s belting voice doesn’t have the same snap. She sometimes reached for effects that, conspicuously in her “New York, New York” finale, eluded her by a sizable distance. So what? She gave it a second try when she felt she came up unacceptably short, and the image of a beloved diva struggling to reproduce her old magic actually added to the magic of her interpretations.

*****

Minnelli has been allotted by the showbiz gods an endless supply of do-overs, and she acknowledged both her good fortune and hard knocks with a healthy dose of ironic wit.