Elaine Stritch: At Liberty

I don't want to suffer for my art, but I'm awfully glad Elaine Stritch did.

If you know much about the American Musical Theater (for some reason, that
needs to be Capitalized), you won't need much an introduction to Stritch.
Possibly best known for introducing the song "Ladies Who Lunch" in Steven
Sondheim's Follies in 1970, Stritch has had a pioneering career in
television, movies, and Broadway. It has not been a smooth ride.

Elaine Stritch: At Liberty is some or all of: the world's most tuneful AA
testimony, the world's shortest autobiography, or the most focused cabaret
acts you'll ever hear. Recorded live over three nights at the end of her
cabaret run (it later transferred uptown to Broadway), At Liberty is a
harrowing 2-CD musical portrait of a steely talent overcoming a
self-destructive streak nearly ˆ but not quite — as strong.

"Remarkable talent, Elaine," she says one of her producers told her one
night. "Don't fuck it up."

The show itself consisted of your basic nine-piece pit band and Stritch
alone on stage ˆ except for a brilliantly wrought script by John Lahr (son
of the actor Burt and a journalist of some repute). There are stories here
of growing up impossibly sheltered in Michigan in what must have been the
Œ30s, summer stock and a date with Marlon Brando, an engagement with Ben
Gazarra, throwing over Gazarra for Rock Hudson, working with Noel Coward,
Hal Prince and Steven Sondheim, and and and.

Throughout it all was the fear and the booze. It's entertaining to hear her
match the shows she was in with the particular tipple she needed to get
through them. It's less entertaining when you realize that she's starting
to lose work because of it. And it's not entertaining at all to hear about
her nearly fatal diabetic collapse after one or three too many.

But don't forget the songs, not all of which she's sung before, but all of
which are brilliantly informed by a Technicolor life nearly thrown away.
"I'm Still Here" is brilliant, as you might expect, and so is "Ladies Who
Lunch." A medley of "But Not for Me" and "If Love Were All" is a
heartbreaking first-act closer. And her interpretation of two Noel Coward
songs is a revelation.

I would not want Elaine Stritch's life, but I'm grateful for the chronicle
of it that she's left.

Article Author: Dan Rosenbaum

Visit Dan Rosenbaum's author page — Dan Rosenbaum's Blog