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Icons Liza Minnelli and Liberace didn’t perform together in real life, but what this show presupposes is: What if they did?
Since they performed their first show in 2014, David Saffert and Jillian Snow’s Liberace & Liza: A Tribute has become a Portland institution, but also a global phenomenon, touring around the world for more than 10 years. The duo appear in sequin-forward costumes worthy of their inspirations (and often coordinated for the season). With Saffert on piano and Snow on the mic, they perform solos and duets of some of their muses’ famous numbers as well as comic takes on newer pop hits.
After an off–West End stint in London this May, they won two awards, Best Show at the Brighton Fringe Festival and an Assessor’s Choice Offie Award. They also received an exciting offer to take their act to the Harold Pinter Theatre in London’s West End.
While Saffert and Snow haven’t played on Broadway (yet), the West End is the Broadway of London, and the Pinter has been home to such legendary shows as the original Rocky Horror Show and, most recently, a staging of Romeo and Juliet starring Sadie Sink (Stranger Things). Shows often come from or go to Broadway after West End runs. This summer, for example, Oregon’s own Cole Escola is reviving their Tony-winning turn as Mary Todd Lincoln in Oh, Mary!, which began in New York before opening in London.
And Saffert and Snow are heading back to England soon. A two-week window opened up for them at the Pinter starting June 24, which will almost immediately follow a hometown show at Portland Center Stage on June 17.
“We’re really giving people the preview before we pack,” Saffert says. After the show, they’re taking off their sequined costumes and putting them straight into a suitcase.
The London residency is a departure for Saffert and Snow. They have performed in all kinds of venues, from traditional theaters like PCS to smaller club spaces like 54 Below in New York City. But the Pinter will be the most prestigious venue they’ve played.
The local preview June 17 will include classics like “Maybe This Time” from Cabaret, the film that won Minnelli an Oscar for Best Actress, and a Gershwin medley Liberace used to perform. Besides seeing the classics come to life, one of the charms of the variety show is that Saffert and Snow get to imagine how these two divas might have interpreted modern songs.
Without giving too much away, the set list for the current show includes their version of Britney Spears’ “Toxic,” the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe,” and Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga’s duet from A Star Is Born, “Shallow.”
“You won’t see anyone else do ‘Shallow’ like the way Liberace and Liza do it,” Saffert says, noting that the song has become something of a signature number.
While they’ve yet to meet Liza herself, Snow says the pair has gotten word that her surrounding friends know that “we’re not poking fun, and that it is a loving homage.” That is to say, Snow says she took care to avoid a mean-spirited impression in which “I’m going to, you know, waltz on stage with a bottle of pills using them as maracas. That schtick has been done and it’s not kind.”
Still, Liberace & Liza has amassed something of a celebrity following. At the London show in May, Saffert and Snow received a backstage visit from comedian and actress Jennifer Saunders, best known for writing and starring in the sitcom Absolutely Fabulous, who Saffert says is “such an inspiration for us.” They got advance notice that she’d be in the audience, but, Saffert says, they both “wanted to throw up” when they heard. They were “extra cheeky” for Saunders, Snow says, adding that Saunders loved the show.
What if Liza herself were in the audience one day?
“I mean, I would have a heart attack and die,” Snow says, “and then the show would just, you know, be left to David.”
After their two-week, 16-show London run, Saffert and Snow are bopping around the world this summer, playing 54 Below in New York, Feinstein’s at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco, and then hopping back across the pond to participate in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for most of August. They have become a worldwide phenomenon, including on Instagram, which expands this what-if universe by chronicling Liza and Liberace doing everyday things, like visiting the mall. But Portland will always be home to this version of Liberace and Liza.
SEE IT: Liberace & Liza: A Tribute at Portland Center Stage at The Armory, 128 NW 11th Ave, 503-445-3700, pcs.org. 7:30 pm Wednesday, June 17. $40–$75.
