November 30, 2007

Liza graces the stage at McCallum

Bruce Fessier
The Desert Sun

Liza Minnelli, who performed at the McCallum Theatre when it was better known as the Bob Hope Cultural Center, helped the theater celebrate its 20th anniversary Thursday as a desert institution all its own.

The performing arts center is in a period of transition. McCallum President and CEO Ted Giatas has said the McCallum will one day - perhaps seven years from now - be part of a multi-facility performing arts center with a 2,500-seat theater, a 300-seat cabaret theater and other amenities.

But board chairman Harold Matzner said before the gala Thursday that his colleagues Jim Houston and Peter Solomon are working on an architectural uses plan so the board can have a price tag on the project before it can begin a capital campaign.

Giatas has said he hopes to have a price tag by January.

Thursday night, said Matzner, was as much a celebration of raising $1.4 million at the gala as it was about the past or the future of the theater. The fundraising total exceeded last year's record by $400,000.

"It's amazing the amount of money that has been raised," Matzner said. "This is the biggest (benefit) I've run into in my stay here."

Tony Bennett performed at last year's gala, which broke the record set the previous year when Barry Manilow was the headliner.

Minnelli had much to live up to, but her rare performance in the desert (she was honored at last February's Steve Chase Humanitarian Awards Gala but only sang one song) generated anticipation from Liza fans and McCallum patrons.

Jennie Sirianni, 28, flew from Orlando, Fla., to see the show and have dinner as part of the gala at Cuistot restaurant, one of four restaurants that patrons dined at as part of the celebration. Sirianni, bearing a striking resemblance to Minnelli, said she was doing her master's thesis performance project on Minnelli and this was her first time watching her.

The smile on her face as she watched the performance indicated she wasn't disappointed.

Minnelli, who has undergone numerous hip and knee replacements, came out in all black attire and announced she had lost 33 pounds thanks to Jenny Craig.

She opened with "I Can See Clearly Now," revealing her new optimistic attitude as well as her arrival in the desert, and performed several songs from a television special she's planning dedicated to her late godmother, Kay Thompson.

Minnelli, 61, took a seat after the third song, which she noted was earlier than she had done in her youth, but her energy level was powerful enough to generate big ovations for show stoppers such as "Cabaret," "The Man I Love" and Al Jolson's "Mammy."

Just as significantly, she showed the kind of appreciation for the theater the theater board hoped to convey to its supporters.

"God, this theater is beautiful," she said. "(It's) a marvelous place of dreams."