My Favorite Broadway: The Leading Ladies on DVD

This is another of those special concerts at a prestigious venue, drawing in the glitterati of the musical theater world, performing for the creme of society paying top dollar, with the resulting performance being film and presented on PBS or somewhere, followed by the DVD being sold to the general public (and fortunately, Netflix). It's a formula.

With My Favorite Broadway: The Leading Ladies filmed in 1998 it's a formula that works very well:

• Prestigious venue? Check-Carnegie Hall.


• Glitterati of Musical Theater? Check-Julie Andrews, Faith Prince, Liza Minnelli, Audra McDonald, Marin Mazzie, Jennifer Holliday, Judy Kuhn, Bebe Neuwirth, and a host of others including the Rockettes, who are the most literally glittering of the -ati.


• Creme of society? I'm not in a position to identify who is in the audience or what they paid to be there, but the hall is full, and most rows seem to include several giddy gay men clapping wildly for Liza.

The main reason this formula works so well in this example is that the fare offered includes a good balance of the usual, the expected, and the unique. Yes, there is Andrea McArdle singing "Tomorrow" and Jennifer Holliday singing her song from Dreamgirls (and blowing the roof off the place, BTW) and Elaine Stritch toasting the "Ladies who Lunch", but there is also the phenomenal Debra Monk, nailing every bit of "Everybody's Girl" from Steele Pier, and Audra McDonald singing a wonderful, clever arrangement of "Down with Love". Ms. McDonald is also joined by Marin Mazzie and Judy Kuhn for a clever medley of Andrew Lloyd Webber songs.

I could have done without Tony Roberts and Robert Morse opening the concert with a number in drag (I assume from a musical version of Some Like It Hot that I don't know). These women can hold their own without any help from the Y chromosome.