SALIERI and Mozart had taken the night off from disputing their musical differences in Amadeus, leaving row upon row of crimson drapes, golden-headed footlights and a big open invitation of a wooden stage floor for Sian Phillips.

Short of rolling out the red carpet, the Welsh star of stage and screen could not have made a more grand entrance.

As a matter of fact, there was a carpet, more the size and dimension of a magic piece, to the side of musical director Kevin Amos's grand piano. Two stools stood by, one for Sian's notes and a glass of water, the other for dramatic emphasis in a couple of numbers to come.

Sian, in a long coat that swished theatrically behind her, had dressed for the occasion; so too the conscientious Kevin Amos in his DJ.

Here was chic cabaret, a nostalgic concert of show songs and memories on a sometime autobiographical musical journey through the vagaries of life and love.

Joining her on that journey would be Rodgers and Hart, Stephen Sondheim, Noel Coward, Alan J Lerner, Kurt Weill, Jacques Brel and Joni Mitchell. Dorothy Parker, Tallulah Bankhead and Mrs Patrick Campbell would chip in with witty asides too.

In conversation, Sian Phillips has one of those voices you could happily bathe in for hours, luxuriant as the best soap, with the sparkle of champagne and a theatrical hauteur that is dying out. You couldn't place the accent - Welsh, RADA, the movies, darling - but you know the copyright belongs solely to Sian Phillips.

In song, that voice is not so distinctive. What she does is bring character to a lyric, as much through facial expression as vocal inflection.

She enacts a song, seeks out its drama, its sentiment, its mood, playful, wise, melancholic or frothy. Here is a talking voice, not one of those big Welsh show-off edifices, her singing measured and cloaked in velvet.

The actress shone through in Sing Willow, her reprise of her RADA audition piece from Othello, so too in her interpretation of Where Have All The Flowers Gone?, the Dietrich show-piece from her role in Pam Gems's Marlene that prompted Sian to add cabaret to her repertoire four years ago.

The anecdotes, dropping pudding on Noel Coward's lap and singing Welsh songs with Richard Burton at three in the morning, had you wishing for even more of the golden era gossip.

Read the autobiography she was only too delighted to sign afterwards.

Updated: 10:17 Friday, August 01, 2003