25 October
Rod Laver Arena
For all the shows I've seen in the last month or so, this is the one that had me crying.
Uncontrollable tears that made a black farce of the lashings of mascara I applied (along with divine decadence green nail polish, darling) as a tiny symbol of my worship of Liza.
I sat in a sports stadium crying as an oldish woman, who really has lost her voice, growled some old show tunes!
I teared-up when she waked onto the stage, blubbed when she sang "What makes a man a man?" and there was snot for "Maybe this time". Yes, I am a gay man in a straight woman's body. The boys wearing matching pink sequined waistcoats were butcher than me tonight.
So where's all my too-educated, analysis of this show? Where's my sophisticated criticism of her story telling or her technique?
There is none. I love Liza Minnelli and so did the thousands of other people who joined me to stand and cheer.
What is it about that Liza makes me look past the faults that a young man in his grandmother's fox fur stole was happy to tell me about during the interval? (And, yes, I was still the most limp wristed one in the conversation.)
Liza is a goddam, fucking legend superstar who understands that song is story; that grasping the emotion and the soul of a song will win an audience more than a pitch perfect performance.
And I know the person crying tonight was my inner tween. The me who watched Cabaret at an age when she knew little about the Holocaust, let alone abortion, syphilis and bisexuality - but still knew that that was the world she wanted to live in. A world that tells us stories about people and places that make us care, make us cry, make us sing and make us still love green nail polish 30-odd years later.
