Liza Minnelli's life is a backstage saga of setbacks and comebacks, so it was only fitting that her return to the Strip last month was the stuff of a show tune.

In May 1998, the music hall legend quietly disappeared from Las Vegas stages after struggling through a stint that came right after the death of close family friend Frank Sinatra. She was overweight and fragile in her stage presence; her voice was shot.

October's comeback at the Luxor -- where she returns this weekend -- was too long in the making, but worth the wait. Minnelli is 26 pounds lighter, she told the crowd, and showed off some dance steps to prove it. And her 60-year-old voice is impressively close to its old form, given that it's laid bare for all to hear in front of a modest 12-piece band, with no buffering string section or backup singers. She even performed an a capella encore, "I'll Be Seeing You."

The song list connected old favorites to a few surprises in her signature theatrical style. You could count on the barnburning title song to "Cabaret," but she also did "So What?," complete with a theatrical set-up as the character. The song doesn't go to the Sally Bowles character Minnelli played in the movie, but to the musical's matronly boarding house director, who explains that life requires compromise.

"Isn't that a terrific philosophy?" Minnelli asked the crowd afterward.

There was a compatible survival theme in "I Am My Own Best Friend" from "Chicago." But only a stage personality as outsized as Minnelli's can get away with singing "Alexander's Ragtime Band" in 2006.

The big showy moments were balanced by the singer's way of warming a crowd with conversational anecdotes, such as the time longtime drummer and "best friend" Bill Lavornga caught her driving down the Strip when she was 13 years old but didn't snitch to mother Judy Garland.

Of course fans couldn't help but getting a bit choked up with the "Cabaret" lyric that touched upon the song character's propensity for "too much pills and liquor." Minnelli gave the words a moment of emphasis, but the bigger emotion was one of triumph -- and high hopes that these engagements will become a regular routine again.