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Brick Wall Comedy
Brick Wall Comedy

At Liberty

Elaine Stritch

HBO · 2004 · 2 h 20 min

A dry, blunt cabaret retrospective of a fifty-year Broadway career.

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Elaine Stritch walks on stage wearing only an oversized white shirt and black tights, pulls up a single chair, and delivers a blunt post-mortem of a fifty-year showbiz career. She does not seek pity for her mistakes, nor does she ask for applause for surviving them; she simply recounts her life with the dry, gravelly pragmatism of someone who has seen the bottom of too many glasses. Constructed with writer John Lahr and director George C. Wolfe, the performance is part cabaret, part stand-up, and part confessional. Filmed at London’s Old Vic Theatre by documentarians D.A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus, and Nick Doob, the 2004 HBO broadcast captures Stritch at a career peak following her 2002 Tony Award for the Broadway run. She spends much of the evening sharing career missteps, from dropping actor Ben Gazzara the second Rock Hudson showed interest in her, to her disastrous audition for the role of Dorothy on The Golden Girls, which she blew by nervously dropping an expletive in front of creator Susan Harris. She also repeats a backstage remark from Richard Burton, who once told her that her performance almost gave him an orgasm, leaving her to ponder what he could possibly mean by ‘almost’. Between these showbiz anecdotes, she sings cabaret standards, culminating in a performance of Stephen Sondheim’s ‘I’m Still Here’ that serves as the thesis for her entire career.

The set list

5 bits

  1. First whiskey sour

    Recalls her father giving her a whiskey sour as a 13-year-old at a Catholic girls school in Detroit, opening a Pandora's box of possibilities and launching into 'This Is All Very New to Me'

  2. Drinking before going on stage

    Bluntly rationalizes stage fright and alcohol consumption with the line: 'It's scary up here. OK? So you're scared. You drink. You're not scared. What is the problem?'

  3. All-night drinking with Judy Garland

    Relates a drinking binge with Garland that lasted past dawn until Garland finally shook her hand and said, 'Elaine, I never thought I'd say this, but good night.'

  4. Unsatisfactory romances

    Recounts romantic misadventures with Marlon Brando, Gig Young, and Ben Gazzara, the latter ending when she fell head over heels for Rock Hudson

  5. Encore performance of 'Something Good'

    Closes the performance with a tentative, vulnerable rendition of Richard Rodgers' 'Something Good' as an ode to insecurity

How it plays

Tone
Poignant, rueful, screamingly funny, biting, and unvarnished
On stage
Brassy, outsized, razor-sharp, acerbic, and brutally honest, likened to a very large, very dry martini
Pace
Merrily mercurial delivery with masterful control of rhythm, pause, sudden changes in tempo from lento to presto, and shifts from loud to soft
About
Broadway and show business, battles with alcoholism, romance and heartbreak, fear of performing and insecurity, aging and survival

What the critics said

Hailed as utterly sensational, poignant, screamingly funny, and a tour de force blending comedy, drama, and song with piercing emotional truth

In the room: Rapt, emotionally transformed, and punctuated by standing ovations

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: imdb.com, phfilms.com, themoviedb.org, en.wikipedia.org, nytimes.com, variety.com, nymag.com.

Backstory

Autobiographical reflection covering Stritch's resolutely Catholic upbringing, rise to stardom, lifelong struggle with alcoholism, and personal relationships, including the death of her husband John Bay

Details

Released
Taped
Old Vic Theatre, London
Runtime
2 h 20 min
Where
HBO
Director
Nick Doob, Chris Hegedus, D. A. Pennebaker, Andy Picheta
Honors
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety, Music, or Comedy Special (2004)Primetime Emmy Award for Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program (2004)Tony Award for Best Special Theatrical Event (2002) and 3 more
Topics

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