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“Ricky Ritzel Sings Elaine Stritch”
54 Below: March 15, 22; Don’t Tell Mama: April 26, May 6
A sort of barrelhouse raucousness was at play in Ricky Ritzel’s tribute show to Elaine Stritch at 54 Below—a brand of spontaneity and sense of fun that I haven’t quite felt on previous visits to the club. Maybe it was because Ritzel performed his show, which was directed by Jim Luzar, almost entirely seated at the piano (an arrangement that had a down side, too, but I’ll get to that in a bit). Though he most certainly had a set list and itinerary of jokes, it seemed almost as though we were all surrounding Ritzel at a piano bar, listening to him extemporize as he talked about and sang songs associated with the celebrated, infamously grumpy and outspoken star.
Ritzel did not exactly impersonate Stritch. True, he dressed in her trademark black tights and untucked white-collared dress shirt—as did his musicians, bassist Jamie Mohamdein and percussionist Mary Rodriguez (“The Stritch Marks”). But he somehow sounded like her anyway. He told us early on in the program how much he identified with Stritch. He has, through some sort of osmosis maybe, found a way of embodying fully her flamboyant cantankerousness.
Unfortunatlely, at times Ritzel seemed a bit distant—unconnected from his material and from the audience. Maybe I wouldn’t have felt this was so had I actually been sitting up close at a piano bar hearing him perform. Sometimes, seated up on the 54 Below stage, he almost faded into the woodwork—and that’s something that Elaine Stritch would simply not—and perhaps could not—do.
This difficulty surfaced in the very first number, a galloping version of Ziggy Elman and Johnny Mercer’s “And the Angels Sing.” Rodriguez’s drumming was a frantic pounding thrash that prevented us from hearing all the song’s lyrics, and Ritzel—busy working as headliner, pianist, and bandleader all rolled into one—didn’t have the chance, really, to make a grand first impression. The number seemed rushed, perfunctory, and not very polished. Some of the other up-tempo numbers in the show were also a kind of noisy blur.
Fortunately, there were several ballads and other less vertiginous selections in which Ritzel was able to shine. His charm came through in the easy, loping “I Never Know When” (Jean and Walter Kerr, Joan Ford, Leroy Anderson, from the musical Goldilocks). And on the ballads “Why Do I Love You?” (Kern and Hammerstein, from Show Boat) and—especially—”If He Walked Into My Life” (Jerry Herman, from Mame), Ritzel came close to reaching the same kind of poignancy that Stritch herself can summon.
Between songs there were plenty of juicy anecdotes (some juicier than others) about the Stritch legend. “You live here [New York City] for a minute, you have an Elaine Stritch story,” Ritzel declared. His dish was spicy but never for a moment mean-spirited.
“Why Do I Love You?” was the second of Ritzel’s three encores. The first was Sondheim’s “The Ladies Who Lunch,” from Company, and the third was Rodgers and Hart’s “Zip,” from Pal Joey. On the opening section of “Ladies, ” Ritzel got up and stood at the microphone center stage, and we got a sense of how different—and, to my thinking, how much stronger—the program might have been had he not been stuck at the piano throughout the act. With “Ladies,” too, he perhaps came closest to actual mimicry of Stritch, at least with that famously long, sustained caterwaul that happens mid-song. But the study of Gypsy Rose Lee’s ennui, “Zip,” was the best of the encores. It’s a credit to Ritzel’s skill at deadpan comedy that he earned big laughs from the audience throughout the song—especially considering that for most of the world, some of Larry Hart’s topical 1940 allusions had slipped into obscurity a half century or more ago.
Mark Dundas Wood is an arts/entertainment journalist and dramaturg. He began writing reviews for BistroAwards.com in 2011. More recently he has contributed "Cabaret Setlist" articles about cabaret repertoire. Other reviews and articles have appeared in theaterscene.net and clydefitchreport.com, as well as in American Theatre and Back Stage. As a dramaturg, he has worked with New Professional Theatre and the New York Musical Theatre Festival. He is currently literary manager for Broad Horizons Theatre Company.
A sort of barrelhouse raucousness was at play in Ricky Ritzel’s tribute show to Elaine Stritch at 54 Below—a brand of spontaneity and sense of fun that I haven’t quite felt on previous visits to the club. Maybe it was because Ritzel performed his show, which was directed by Jim Luzar, almost entirely seated at the piano (an arrangement that had a down side, too, but I’ll get to that in a bit). Though he most certainly had a set list and itinerary of jokes, it seemed almost as though we were all surrounding Ritzel at a piano bar, listening to him extemporize as he talked about and sang songs associated with the celebrated, infamously grumpy and outspoken star.