Sunday October 19, 1986
by Stephen Holden
LIBERACE, the reigning monarch of American glitz, outdid himself in campy showmanship Thursday at the opening-night performance of his Radio City Music Hall engagement, which runs through Nov. 2. Instead of gliding onto the stage in a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce limousine, as in past years, the pianist arrived in midair, attached to a wire like a puffed-up Peter Pan, in a hundred pounds of purple and white feathers.
''When I passed over Shea Stadium, the Astros looked up to see who was flying and the Mets won the pennant,'' he said after he alighted.
Though Liberace's current show is not entirely fresh, it boasts several lavish new production numbers. The biggest - and the silliest - is a belated tribute to the Statue of Liberty. As a cutout of the statue clutching a candelabrum rises at the rear of the stage, Liberace and the Rockettes, decked out in glittery red, white and blue, parade and kick to ''The Stars and Stripes Forever.''
But if Liberace's new show boasts grander, splashier decor, its musical segments remain essentially unchanged. As before, the pianist offers tributes to Chopin and Eddy Duchin and ''Mack the Knife'' arranged in settings that parody Mozart, Debussy and Johann Strauss. His heavy-miked pianism is at once metallic sounding, exaggeratedly florid in ornamentation and unbendingly rigid in tone and phrasing.
Musically, the most satisfying moment came not from Liberace but from his 14-year-old protege, Eric Hamelin. After a two-piano rendition of ''Slaughter on 10th Avenue,'' the young man played a solo medley of ''Malaguena,'' Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu and a Rachmaninoff-styled arrangement of ''Vesti la giubba'' from ''I Pagliacci.'' Beneath the fancy flourishes, one could detect a lyrical sensibility struggling to turn an unwieldy grand gesture into something more personal.
First published in The New York Times, October 19 1986
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