NEW YORK - THE woman knows how to a work a room. Even one as big and as historic as the Palace Theatre, that shrine to vaudeville on the corner of Broadway and 47th Street on the edge of Times Square.

Despite years of various ailments, infirmities and assorted marital disappointments, Liza Minnelli has sunny star-wattage to spare, a never-say-die attitude that is astonishing to watch. The evening is called 'Liza's at the Palace', and it would be foolish if you don't catch her act before it closes Dec 28.

Minnelli has always been a mixture of unabashed enthusiasm and heartbreaking vulnerability. Listen to the original cast recording of 'Flora, the Red Menace' (the musical that won Minnelli her first Tony - at age 19) and you get a sense of the woman's duality.

Both qualities are on display at the Palace, where Minnelli is delivering a sterling piece of entertainment that looks backward and forward. The show is infused with a joyous nostalgia for the past.

How could it not be at the Palace, where the ghosts of famous performers must be cheering her on. Among those spirits: her mother, Judy Garland, who in the early 1950s scored a triumph at the theater. It's nice to see history repeating itself.

Minnelli doesn't stint in her show. She's onstage for a full two hours, exiting only in the second act for a brief time to allow a terrific four-man chorus - Johnny Rodgers, Cortes Alexander, Jim Caruso and Tiger Martina - to give her some breathing space.

Minnelli's voice has darkened and lowered over the years. Some of the high notes are gone, but she makes up for it with a determined theatricality that propels her across the large Palace stage with surprising ease.

She looks sensational, too, decked out in a sparkly white pants suit for Act 1 and a variety of second-half costume changes, including an abbreviated black mini-dress that shows off her terrific legs.

If much of the show is immersed in the past, its musicianship is thoroughly up-to-date, starting with Minnelli's musical supervisor, pianist Billy Stritch, a superb, creamy-sounding singer in his own right.

The evening has been cannily constructed by director and choreographer Ron Lewis. Most of the Minnelli favorites are here, starting with the songs of John Kander and Fred Ebb, who wrote 'Flora'.

Kander's beguiling melodies and Ebb's supple, natural lyrics are a perfect fit for Minnelli's direct, often over-the-top approach.

Lewis has wisely put the title song from 'Cabaret' as a first-act curtain number. Minnelli acts it out with a fierce defiance that also permeates her rendition of another Kander-and-Ebb anthem, 'New York, New York'.

Much of the show's newness comes from Minnelli's musical salute to her godmother, Kay Thompson, a 20th-century Renaissance woman who was a writer ('Eloise'), performer, vocal coach and musical arranger during the heyday of Hollywood musicals.

With an assist from that four-man chorus, Minnelli recreates a bit of Thompson's late 1940s nightclub act.

A witty, sophisticated woman, Thompson had a style and flair all her own that Minnelli effectively channels in this amazing show. Somewhere, Thompson must be smiling. -- AP