POP MUSIC REVIEW : Liza Bounces Back With a Revamped Act

Liza’s back. And with a vengeance.

Forget the much-publicized hip surgery. Forget the hiatus from performing. Forget the doubts about how both might impact her career. The opening concert Wednesday of Liza Minnelli’s five-night run at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts was a brilliant confirmation of her world-class skills.

In fact, Minnelli’s somewhat reduced mobility happily placed greater emphasis on her vocal and theatrical presentation. Instead of filling the stage with high-voltage, rapid-fire dance steps, she brought the focus in much closer via more subtle strutting, her classic, mime-like arm and hand movements, and richly multilayered lyrical interpretations. The result was a far more intimate show than she has offered in past appearances.

One of the highlight numbers was a sensual rendering of “I Love a Piano.” By simply slowing down the tempo, and accompanying the song with a series of seductive moves while seated in an elevated director’s chair, she transformed Irving Berlin’s ragtimey theme into an erotic anthem. Equally fascinating was a passionate but never overblown version of “So What,” a Lotte Lenya song that didn’t make it to the film version of “Cabaret.”

More familiar tunes from her repertoire also benefited from Minnelli’s closer-in readings. In Charles Aznavour’s “What Makes a Man a Man,” for example, she disclosed a stark, symbolic representation of loneliness that reached well beyond the specific story of the lyrics. “Some People,” “And the World Goes Round,” “Cabaret” and the inevitable “New York, New York” sounded fresh, alive and new--irrefutable evidence of Minnelli’s return to the first rank of musical entertainment.

* Liza Minnelli appears through Sunday at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive, Cerritos, 8 p . m. $60-$125. (310) 916-8500.