Liza says, 'Shine a flashlight on me and I'll do a show'

Liza Minnelli answered the telephone in her New York apartment with the kind of exuberance that fueled her return to the Palace Theatre on Broadway earlier this year.

The legendary theater's top balcony had to be opened for the first time in years. There was stamping and cheering. There were standing ovations, and flowers thrown to the stage. Her hands rose into the air as she reached for the love - and that high note. Despite the major surgeries that, not many years ago, had suggested a permanent retirement was in order, she danced. It was true that night that, as The New York Times had once written of her, "Her every stage appearance is perceived as a victory of show-business stamina over psychic frailty. She asks for love so nakedly and earnestly, it seems downright vicious not to respond."

"I'm not a quitter, sweetie," she chirped into the phone.

On Friday, she's at Chrysler Hall as part of the Virginia Arts Festival. It promises to be the latest battle between Minnelli and her demons. It's Liza, at age 62, vs. the dance kick she has to make and the note she has to reach. She's going for it, like an Olympic diver going for the highest degree of difficulty. She'll get even bigger cheers if she doesn't make it.

She's still working hard to make sure she does make it. Rehearsal is a big part of her life, she said. In a typical New York day, she's up by 8 a.m. "I always get up early. Always did. Then I go to Luigi's dance class, with a lot of other people. Real people. No celebrities. I regard myself as a dancer, not a singer. Then, I go to lunch with friends. I like to go to the Outback, where I get a chopped

salad. I can't have the pork chops. Then, in the afternoon, I rehearse with Ron. Three hours every afternoon."

Ron Lewis, her longtime collaborator, had all but retired to Las Vegas but came back to direct and choreograph for her. The first half of her Chrysler Hall show will be identical to the New York program, but she's created a new second act, which she tried out in Brazil and Argentina since the January closing at the Palace.

After New York and Brazil, is Norfolk the next logical stop? "Yes, because you asked me. It's that simple. Shine a flashlight on me and I'll do a show."

Most of the world had written her off in 2000 because she had encephalitis, a viral brain disease. Sure, there had been alcohol and pills and the Betty Ford Center, but this nearly killed her. Doctors told her she would never perform again.

"I suffered terribly, but it was for a purpose. I said, 'This isn't living,' and I literally rehearsed my way back. I had to relearn how to sing and how to move. It happened. You saw it. I'm not just shuffling around. I'm dancing."

She had two hip replacements and a knee operation. "I was so scared of that first hip operation. I put it off. When I finally got it, it was a miracle. A miracle. I went for the second operation right away. Then the knee operation. Bring 'em on."

As for the support of the audience, she said, "You don't always know it's there. They don't always seem to be with me. People think I can't see the audience, but I can, and sometimes I'll spot one man. It's usually a man, who is not with it. And I'll say to myself, 'I'll get him, if it's the last thing I do.' And I'll play to him until he laughs or applauds, or shows some sign of being alive. They don't come to you for free. It's work, honey."

Her mother, of course, was the legendary Judy Garland of MGM and "The Wizard of Oz," and of drug abuse and death by overdose.

She veritably glowed at the mention of her father's name. He was Oscar-winning director Vincente Minnelli.

She practically grew up on movie sets, and her first credited role was in "Charlie Bubbles," co-starring and directed by Albert Finney (1967). She received an Academy Award nomination for her second, playing needy, eccentric teenager Pookie Adams in "The Sterile Cuckoo." Her classic role, as Sally Bowles, in "Cabaret" brought her the Oscar in 1972.

No later films could match that, although "New York, New York" and two "Arthur" films were notable.

"It's just that I was a song-and-dance person, and they stopped making musical movies. But I'm still very much an actress. I act every time I sing a song. Every song is a little movie. I concentrate so hard. I think of the woman who would be singing these lines. That's acting, isn't it?"

She has been married and divorced four times. Her inability to have a child, she said, "was perhaps meant to be, although I desperately wanted a child. The closest thing I had to a child were my younger brother and sister. Now, for the first time in my life, I'm not with anyone. I always was taught to believe that you had to be with someone. Now I'm on my own, and I'm very happy."

It is no coincidence that the one new song written for Minnelli's current show is "I Would Never Leave You." Even at age 62 with all the triumphs, Judy Garland's little girl is still the waif who is in need of her audience's help.

Mal Vincent, (757) 446-2347, mal.vincent@pilotonline.com