For two nights last June, Rufus Wainwright performed in New York City to sold-out crowds, recreating Judy Garland’s iconic 1961 concert at Carnegie Hall. Critics showered the performance with praise, and seemingly every gay on the planet caught the show at least once. Luckily for the few of us who didn’t get to see the concert in person, it was released on CD and DVD on Tuesday, just in time for the holidays. I opted for the DVD, entitled Rufus! Rufus! Rufus! Does Judy! Judy! Judy!, over the CD recording, figuring it was the closer of the two in approximating the concert-going experience.

A couple things surprised me right off the bat. First, when I first picked up the DVD, I was mystified to note that the performance filmed was not at Carnegie Hall. Instead, we get one of the following wave of performances, when Rufus took the act on the road. This DVD captures the performance at the London Palladium theater. This isn’t a bad thing, just odd considering that Carnegie Hall is the venue that’s synonymous with the legendary Garland concert.

Second, I was shocked at how bad Rufus is at talking to the audience. The few sections where he stops singing and regales the audience with amusing anecdotes and stories are rather rambling. From interviews, I always had the impression that Wainwright was fairly well-spoken and loquacious, so it’s somewhat jarring to see him fumble his way through some of the stories. Of course, I’ve never seen a live Rufus performance before, so maybe that’s just his way.

But that’s a minor quibble; people came to hear him sing, not chat, and he does put on a fantastic show. At over two hours, the performance must have been exhausting and it’s obvious he’s giving it everything he’s got, stretching his voice to its limits.

(More on the DVD and a video clip of the show can be found after the break!)

Oh, Rufus Wainwright, how you sparkle.

Oh, audience who went to see Rufus Wainwright at the San Francisco Masonic Auditorium last Friday, what’s wrong with you?

I refer specifically to the absolute flat-boring way the audience was dressed. There were perhaps five of us wearing anything that could remotely be considered sparkly, except, of course, for Rufus and his band, who were appropriately blinding in their shininess.

And that’s why I want to know what’s wrong with the people of my city, especially my gay brothers who I once could count on not to go see a diva like Rufus wearing little zip-up track jackets and running shoes.

The crunchy granola-ness of his audience didn’t seem to affect Rufus, though. He opened the show with a rendition of “Release the Stars” that tore right out of his gut, dressed in a white suit covered with blue flowers and about ten pounds of diamante, illuminated during the choruses with the thousand swirling sparkles of a good old-fashioned disco ball.

I believe that if you check the dictionary under “sui generis,” you’ll find a photo of Rufus Wainwright. No one puts on a more eclectic show, and with the tragic loss of James Brown earlier this year, I’m thinking we might also have a new “hardest working man in show business.” Four costume changes, a two-hour set (at least – it might have been longer but I lost all track of time), and enough genre-hopping to overwhelm a less gifted artist. He sang rock, folk, an un-miked Irish ballad, Judy Garland classics, and all of it with complete abandon and the passion he’s justly renowned for.