I've seen a few productions in the UK and eventually saw one that really did work, at a small fringe theatre in South London. Sadly, this was when Jerry Herman was unwell and unable to come over for it. I had to visit the show twice more.
I adore Liza and always have but I think she could handle the song in it's present key but she tended to yell . A bit lower key would have been more electric and awesome IMO! She was very young here and made a great impression!
How thrilled that band must have been. They just got to listen. Where does Peggy Lee go when she sings this song? It's such a still, beautiful, sad, and reflective place. Amazing. She's luminous and her voice is ethereal.
My absolute favorite thing about this video is the captions are definitely from the original broadcast. Whoever transferred this from the tape it was recorded on cared enough to translate the line 21 closed caption encoding into a modern subtitle file, and then included it on RU-vid.