ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT REPORTS FROM THE TIMES, NEWS SERVICES AND THE NATION’S PRESS.

PEOPLE

Some Good News and Bad News for Liza

Liza Minnelli won mostly cheers from London critics on her return to the concert stage at London’s Royal Albert Hall on Tuesday--despite grumblings that not all of her clearly exhausting program was sung live.

Referring to “mutterings that Liza’s performance was mimed,” Pete Clark in the Evening Standard went on to praise the 56-year-old Oscar winner for offering “a salutary reminder that nobody in the world sings with such intensity.”

Taped support during strenuous dance numbers isn’t unusual, concert publicist Phil Symes said, adding that the singer planned to sing her entire set live the next night “to show that she can.”

To the adoring crowd of 3,800, the matter of lip-syncing was less significant than the fact that Minnelli was there at all. There had been speculation she’d cancel the concert due to vocal strain, and the singer has been battling hip and knee problems.

On a different note, Minnelli’s 94-year-old stepmother sued her for elder abuse, breach of contract and neglect on Tuesday.

Filed in L.A. Superior Court, the suit claims that Lee Anderson Minnelli was guaranteed housing in the will of her late husband, Vincente Minnelli. His daughter Liza, she said, sold the Beverly Hills mansion and instructed she be removed.

Representatives for the singer could not be reached for comment.

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POP/ROCK

Grammys Head East After Four Years in L.A.

Organizers of the Grammy Awards made it official Wednesday: After four years as an exclusively Los Angeles event, the music industry gala will return east next February to Madison Square Garden. Usually held midweek, the 45th annual Grammys will be held on a Sunday, Feb. 23, and broadcast by CBS. The decision is a nod to the Grammy leadership’s publicly stated desire to shuttle the show back and forth between the industry’s two metropolitan hubs.

Michael Greene, president and CEO of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, said at a Wednesday press conference that the money and spotlight associated with the global broadcast are also going back to Gotham “when the city has needed us most”--a reference to recovery efforts from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Greene said that, in October, there were hasty efforts to relocate the most recent Grammy show to New York, but that logistical issues made the symbolic move impossible.

New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg attended the Grammy news conference Wednesday and was presented a guitar with a painted Sept. 11 tribute, the handiwork of a retired city firefighter. Bloomberg’s presence, it seems, was more than ceremonial. Industry buzz has it that his election opened the door to the New York move, since former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Greene had an ongoing public feud.

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QUICK TAKES

Bob Newhart will receive the fifth annual Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, to be awarded Oct. 29. Past recipients include Richard Pryor, Jonathan Winters, Carl Reiner and Whoopi Goldberg.... Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman-CEO John Calley will receive the 2002 Steven J. Ross/AOL Time Warner Award from the USC School of Cinema-Television on April 19....Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford have reached a settlement with the National Examiner. The tabloid had claimed that her coddling of son Cody turned him into a brat. Details of the pact were not released.