Customer Reviews

Elaine Stritch at Liberty

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This DVD brilliantly recaptures the sold-out show which played to packed houses at New York's Public Theatre before moving to Broadway. Eliane Stritch, one of the great ladies of the theatre, recounts her long, fascinating career and her life offstage with a candor which is nothing short of astonishing. In her inimitable voice, Ms. Stritch belts out a generous plateful of songs, including her still-potent THE LADIES WHO LUNCH, from her career-defining performance in Stephen Sondheim's musical hit COMPANY...but it's the revealing, often wrenching details of her long battle with the bottle and her struggle to face her demons head on which make this truly compelling viewing. The DVD perfectly captures the theatrical experience.

No small feat. The scenery consists of a chromium bar stool and 60-foot brick wall.

Theater-buffs recognize Stritch as the legend she is. And most of us are rather pleased that her work in film has always been secondary (her best work in that medium was in Woody Allen's SEPTEMBER)...and that her heart will ALWAYS be in the THEATAH. Although this one-woman-show has plenty of musical numbers, it is mostly an autobiographical tirade, designed to woo our sympathies. As a stage performance it was incredible; as a filmed performance with many close-ups it's a bit disconcerting, like sitting on the corner stool in a prize fight. This is not to diminish the writing, pacing, humor, or the brilliance of Stritch's performance. It's just a little overpowering. At the center of her angst is her Catholic upbringing, lack of luck in love, and her struggle with alcoholism. In fact, she is so tough on herself that you almost fail to notice how tough she is on others. Just short of libelous, we get some very interesting glimpses of her fellow performers: Gig Young, Ethel Merman, Judy Garland, Marlon Brando, Gloria Swanson, and Rock Hudson, to name a few.

So move your barcalounger back twelve feet, get out your handkerchief, and hang on to your hat (does anyone still wear a hat?) And enjoy a legend!.

This bare-bones DVD (no cute extras) captures (on high-quality video) one of the finest one-woman shows ever to hit Broadway and the West End. Elaine Stritch, caught here in London, struts the boards with her still-lovely 78-year-old legs (in black tights) to share tales of life, love and lots of booze on the wicked stage. She has truly "been there, done that, got all the T-shirts"; she's dated Brando, understudied Merman on Broadway (and simultaneously stopped the show in "Pal Joey" in New Haven!), served as Noel Coward's muse, dazzled Richard Burton, drunk Garland under the table, and managed to give incredible performance after incredible performance-- with the help of alcohol for many years.

Stritch can still sell a song, even with her bellowing rasp of a voice (once described as sounding like a stickshift being shifted without the clutch), and she claims chestnuts like "Broadway Baby" and "I'm Still Here" as her own in this piece. But she's also a fierce talent as an actor, and grabs your attention throughout the two-plus hours of this show. Her funny stories are hysterically so (witness her stammeringly ask Merman to allow her to slip up to New Haven to "Pal Joey's" opening during a blizzard, and Merman bray her reply: "Oh Elaine just go up to New Haven for chrissake and sing the #@%&*%!song!!"). Her stories of heartache are truly heartbreaking; her too-brief marriage to John Bay moves her to sing "There Never Was a Baby Like My Baby", and she still misses him twenty years after his death. Her final goodbye to alcohol (after a dangerous hypoglycemic episode) is tinged with sadness; for years alcohol was her constant companion on stage.

But now she's healthy, reclaiming the life she almost missed in a boozy haze. And we get to enjoy a huge, vital talent, still in her prime, still making great theatre. Long Live Elaine Stritch!

Just about as honest, open, and vulnerable as a performer can be. I saw this show when it first aired and bought the DVD so I can watch it over again. The performance Stritch gives is greater than any of her other work because it incorporates the best of so much of her stage, screen, and TV work. I had the pleasure of meeting Stritch at a SAGE awards dinner in 2005. When I asked her to autograph my DVD she seemed genuinely flattered. The nakedness seen in this show is a glimpse into the personality of a truly gifted performer.

I rented this DVD and wasn't really looking forward to watching it, but this past Saturday afternoon I stuck it in the DVD player and only got up to go to the john till it was over. Ms. Stritch is just amazing in this show. I'd seen her in films and on TV on occasion, but this performance puts them all to shame. Her story about understudying Merman is just a riot. Her Judy Garland story is wonderfully funny, as is the story of her Rock Hudson dating. She's sad in recounting the story of her husband's death and in relating her long, long battle with alcoholism. Her name dropping stories are in turn funny and sad. The songs are great, even though you can tell the years of booze and cigarettes have certainly taken the toll on her voice. Her innocence in the early days of her Broadway career, and even as late as the early 70's in Company when she didn't know who Mahler was, is just amazing. All in all, Elaine is just a force of nature and this video should be watched by all lovers of the Broadway theater. A great companion piece to this would be the DVD of Company:Original Cast Album. Her efforts after a 15 hour recording session to do Ladies Who Lunch and failing is just heart breaking.
This lady is one of the greats of theater and is well deserving of her living legend status.

As a longtime fan of Elaine Stritch, I knew I would probably enjoy this DVD, but I am simply overwhelmed by the wit, the class and the faultless style that went into this performance by a legend captured, thank God, still at the height of her brilliance. The hilarious anecdotes about her experiences in "Pal Joey" and "The Women" alone would be well worth the price of this DVD, yet there is much, much more. Not many other actresses could shift so deftly from self-deprecating humor to pathos and back again, all in what seems like a heartbeat, and all underscored by stylish performances of some great songs. Suffice it to say this DVD deserves to take pride of place in the collection of any theatre fan. Warmly and very enthusiastically recommended!

I agree with the rave reviews that have accompanied this DVD. I saw Elaine live in New York and had to return two years later to see her in San Francisco--to confirm that she was as fabulous as I had remembered. And she was! And still is on this DVD. My one teensy tiny complaint is that the DVD has way too many tight shots. The "Elaine Experience" is so much about seeing her full body language as it punctuates comments and thoughts. The world is very lucky that this performance was preserved. "Another vodka stinger..."

She may not have stuffed the dailies in her shoes or strummed ukuleles, but she has most certainly seen good times and bum times and sang the blues.
And she's still here.
And it's those blues --- and those good and bum times ---that make for a most colorful evening. Elaine Stritch, the septuagenarian recovering alcoholic, functioning diabetic and Tony-winning performer, has taken the liberty of sharing her life and all its highs and lows in "Elaine Stritch At Liberty."
She's seen them all, my dear, and she's still here.
Like the performer herself, the show is hard to pigeonhole: There are enough songs to call it a revue, enough juicy anecdotes and gossipy stories to call it a one-woman show. But labels don't matter. What matters is that Stritch --- best-known for her role in the Noel Coward musical "Sail Away," too often associated with the Walter Kerr and Jean Kerr musical flop "Goldilocks" and canonized for the Stephen Sondheim musical "Company," in which she sang "The Ladies Who Lunch" and too long a cult favorite among theatre devotees --- creates two and a half hours of sheer magic.
She enters carrying a chair, and wearing black tights and a tailored white dress shirt --- "an existential problem in tights," is how she refers to herself. Stritch's legs still have it; her body, despite the years of boozing, late-nighting and neglect, is still supple. And she proves it consistently, lugging around the chair, moving it from here to there, most often to up stage so she can strut her stuff walking down stage. No fool is she.)
The opening line: "It's like what the prostitute once said: it's not the work; it's the stairs;" and the opening number --- "There's No Business Like Show Business" --- offers a tease of what's in store, sets the stage for a life about to made bare. What makes the show work is that Stritch is as tough as she is real --- "you've got to be real to be funny," reminds us.
She doesn't shy away from the pain. There's lots of loss here; aborted romances, vanished jobs (including screwing up an audition for "The Golden Girls"), a dying husband. Stritch recounts first taking a drink, at age 13 or 14, at her father's insistence, and then developing an addiction for the stuff, even getting sloshed at the family dinner table. Alcohol would later be a co-star in her life, destroying romances and igniting trouble. We laugh at the stories, but the show is riddled with profoundly moving, emotional moments; we feel the pain and the strength that has led Stritch down the path of survival. "I think I'm reclaiming a lot of my life hat I wasn't all there for," she muses toward the end of evening, as an explanation to why she did the show.
Stritch is a spellbinding storyteller. Whatever all the tales are true or allegorical doesn't matter. We travel with her from her home in Michigan to arriving in New York, taking classes at the New School and meeting a young actor named Marlon Brando, who it seemed, slept with all the females except Elaine until one night ...
She spends some times (a bit too much time) recounting how she understudied Ethel Merman in "Call Me Madam" at the same time she was performing in new Haven in the out-of-try-outs for "Pal Joey." She called a ex "beau" who she knew had an MG, and convinced him to drive her nightly from New York to New Haven ... time perfectly, so that she could go on stage for her second act show-stopping, "Zip."
That song and many, many others are here ... including the long-forgotten "Civilization," originated by Stritch in the long-forgotten "Angel in the Wings" and a hit for Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters. (Those who remember 78 records will remember: Bongo/bongo/bongo/I don't wanna leave the Congo/Oh no no no no no) ... "I'm Still Here" and, of course, "The Ladies Who Lunch."
At Liberty is so seamlessly constructed that George C. Wolfe's direction is unobtrusive. The show's honesty is its strength, and its strength comes from its honest star, who's enough of a pro to know when (and how) to pause and how to deliver a zinger. When Stritch mentions famous friends --- a drunken Judy Garland bidding her good night at 7 in the morning, Noel Coward respecting her talents so immensely that he asked her to star in a musical, Rock Hudson repeatedly taking her to dinner while they were shooting a film in Europe (she turned down Ben Gazzarra hoping to get a piece of the Rock ... "and we all know what a bum decision that turned out to be," she recalls), Gig Young asking to marry her, dishing Gloria Swanson and Dagmar and Marge Champion because of Stritch's on-stage antics in a summer stock tour of "The Women") --- it's a natural, self-absorbed, exercise in name dropping, but it's also an insight into the rich life of one of the theater's richest personalities.
I'll drink to that! Let's all drink to that!

Forever amber. I have enjoyed the CD since it first came out. However, it just doesn't compare to actually seeing this show. What an incredible talent. What a show. It is hard to believe that any performer, no matter their age, could perform this program eight times a week. It truly staggers the imgaination. Considering the hype and the praise that this show received prior to being released on DVD (and how high my expectations have been), I fully expected to be a little disappointed in the final product. Not so. This should be in every theatre lovers collection. If you care about musical theatre or the performing arts - this is a DVD you should not be without. Great talent Elaine, and you didn't @#$%-it up. You're lookin good mama!

Elaine Stritch is that rarest of finds, a true star. The experience of watching her perform is mesmerizing. Anecdotes about Merman, Garland, Brando and Rock Hudson are usually the highlight of celebrity one woman shows.
Ms. Stritch has an abundance of such stories, that goes without saying, her showbiz pedigree is legendary. Noel Coward called her "Stritchie".
In "At Liberty", however, these stories merely provide a backround for a marvelous fully realized performance. As Stritch levels the full force of her personality at the audience, one can easily see why she was able to impress such theatrical lumunaries as Noel Coward, Richard Rogers and Steven Sondheim. Her singular, remarkable (if self depracating) charm combined with a superb sense of timing, make this show better than the sum of its parts. Each word of this show has been carefully crafted, and then, Ms. Stritch has polished those words to a brilliant sheen. What other artist could recite the entire "Hail Mary" in the middle of a show ,and, have it pay off handsomely?
Cole Porter once said of this girl "She talks funnier than the scripts". This show gives you a chance to see what he meant, and, to cry a little too. Strich is brutally honest about her dissapointments and offstage shortcomings. Her stories pull you into the overheated competative world of big time showbiz, and you will feel like you suffer every indignity WITH her.
In short, if you appreciate true talent in its purest form, you will be able to view "Elaine Stritch at Liberty" many, many times and find something new to appreciate each time.