Elaine Stritch at Liberty
140’ or 90’ – 16:9 Widescreen - 2003

2004 Primetime Emmy - Best Performance
2004 Primetime Emmy - Best Show (Variety, Music or Comedy Special)

Iambic Productions recorded Elaine Stritch at Liberty when the Broadway legend took London’s Old Vic theatre by storm in 2003 – the show had already triumphed in New York, where it won a Tony Award.It triumphed again at the 2004 Emmy Awards, winning not one but two top honours.

The riveting one-woman show is sensational, poignant and incredibly funny. Stritch talks and sings her way through 50 years in American theatre and tells her story. “You’ve got to be real to be funny,” she says early on in the show and she is. Her comic timing is impeccable and her anecdotes are priceless – from a disastrous date with Marlon Brando while they were at drama school together, to failing to get the star role in The Golden Girls because she insulted the writer.

Stritch is also uncompromisingly honest. She admits to having missed most of her life because of her struggle with drink. When she sums herself up as “an existential problem in tights” it is impossible not have huge admiration for a woman who, at the age of 78, can appear on stage in white shirt and tights and knock an audience dead. Elaine Stritch at Liberty was broadcast in the UK on BBC4.

Iambic Productions/HBO/BBC/Image Entertainment