The music is glorious, the jokes unashamedly corny, and the only thing that sparkles more than the silver sheen curtains is the star's sequin-and-diamond-happy attire.

Yes, folks, it's the man from Milwaukee himself, Liberace, and though the entertainer has been dead over twenty years, he came alive again for an all-too-brief 80 minutes Saturday night at the Welk Resort Theatre in Escondido.

Wayland Pickard is the name of the man responsible for the evening's entertainment, and thanks to some virtuosic tinkling on the keys, a winning rapport with the audience, and a likeness remarkably close to the real thing himself, "Music & Memories" is a joyous, if ultimately unenlightening, beginning to the Welk's 2008 season (and that ho-hum title's gotta go).

Wayland Pickard as Liberace

Copyright©2008 Sergio Fernandez

The "Music" ranges from beautifully played classics like Chopin's Nocturne in E flat major and Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" to Joplin's "The Entertainer" and Berlin's "I Love a Piano." In between, there's a smattering of "popped up" classics (in typical Liberace style) like some "Hard Rock" Rachmaninoff and a jazzed up Debussy piece Pickard jokingly refers to as "Claire de Saloon."

Though the video projections used during the Andrew Lloyd Webber tribute ("Cats" and "The Phantom of the Opera," of course) are a little tiresome, and the stationary American flag in the John Philip Sousa section is so schmaltzy the only thing missing is Baby June and company down front twirling some batons, for the remainder of the evening it's the most effective use of multimedia seen at the Welk thus far. When the projection isn't helping the audience remember the lyrics in a boisterous singalong of "The Beer Barrel Polka," or showing accompanying clips of film classics like "An Affair to Remember" and "Doctor Zhivago" in the movie music section, it's usually providing an up-close look at Pickard's marvelously bejeweled fingers dancing vigorously atop the keys.

As for the "Memories" part of the program, there's a nice mix of funny (okay, corny!) anecdotes and asides peppered throughout. True, the show is geared toward Liberace fans, most of whom tend to find themselves on the "greater than" side of 40, but some younger audiences -- myself included -- may find themselves surprised that a man who describes himself as "your mother's Elton John" could be so entertaining (rather, my grandmother's Elton John...maybe). One just has to see Pickard's one-man, one-handed bench-top can-can to believe it.

Visually, the show recalls a sumptuous, intimate Vegas showroom, with Ryan Seybert's shiny-curtained set design complementing Pickard's diamond-heeled white oxfords and glittering getup (by Margo Stone and Alexa Stone). Jennifer Edwards-Northover's colorful lighting design fits in perfectly.

Kevin Haney's makeup design makes subtle use of prosthetics to further Pickard's transformation into Liberace, and Victoria Wood's wig design completes the look.

Through Pickard, one gets to learn a little about the man who was born Wladziu Valentino Liberace (to Polish-American and Italian parents), but surprisingly, the show continues to dance around the topic of Liberace's sexuality, just as Liberace did during his lifetime. Despite a $113 million palimony suit against Liberace brought about in 1982 by his live-in boyfriend Scott Thorson, the entertainer continued to deny his homosexuality up until his death five years later, and in "Music & Memories," the most substantial mention of it is a joke about why he never got married -- because he "couldn't spare the closet space."

Hardy har har.

Not surprisingly, this brand of denial is wholeheartedly endorsed by the Liberace Foundation, the result being a vastly entertaining show in which, amazingly, we learn very little about the man himself.

In the end, the "Memories" shared here are the sanitized, wholesome ones most Liberace fans revere, which may prove frustrating to anyone wanting to know more about the man as a whole.

It's a good thing, then, that the "Music" is so good.

VIEW PROGRAM HERE (PDF)