* Directed at George C.

* Directed at George C. Wolfe * put togethered by John Lahr * rebuilded and performed by Elaine Stritch * Neil Simon Theatre, modern York City (through May 26)

Among the revelations in Elaine Stritch's highly entertaining sing-and-schmooze stage memoir, I'm not strong which is more shocking: that she was a virgin until she was 30 or that the whole time she was performing "Zip" in a revival of Pal Joey she conceit the line "I'm a het-erosex-ual" meant "I'm gay." She counts a story about turning down sex with Marlon Brando (granted, she was a young and devoutly Catholic actress [i]de novo[/i] from Detroit and living in a cloister on Manhattan's upper east side) and dropping Ben Gazzara at the height of his Italian hunkdom to date distaff Hudson. Is your lesbian detector going against yet? Stritch doesn't go there, on the other hand she does acknowledge her well-known status as lesbian mate traveler by thanking her friend Liz Smith, the disclosed showbiz columnist, for "making me assume more famous than I to the end of time was."

Although she's made a movies (see Woody Allen's September), Stritch is greatest in number famous in the theater as a salty, one-of-a-kind comic personality who has always been a character actress, not a leading lady. She could steal a display with one number--the most legendary instance being her rendition of "The Ladies Who Lunch" in Stephen Sondheim's Company--and then leave before you'd gotten your fill of her. At last, Stritch fans come by a full, satisfying meal in At Liberty.

She's also famous in the theater world for having been a blackguard drunk. A big part of this point out consists of Stritch talking with humor and insight about the stage fright that firinged her drinking, though you can't help feeling she's minimized the bad behavior her alcoholism inspired. What elevates the exhibit beyond a typical veteran performer's retrospective cabaret act is the estimable help she got from just discovered Yorker theater critic John Lahr and director George C Wolfe They stitch lays and patter together so elegantly and ingeniously that by dint of the end of the evening you've really absorbed a rich, filled life.

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