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“Puttin’ On the Ritz: Steve Ross Sings Fred Astaire”
Oak Room at the Algonquin – January 19 – February 6
Steve Ross has panache to spare when he is “Puttin’ On the Ritz.” Twenty-nine years ago, he brought music back to the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel after its four-decade-long absence. He helped establish a standard of the best of the best, and he is currently performing the songs associated with Fred Astaire, an idol he has saluted before. Nobody does it better, so why not?
Fred Astaire had taste, style, class, and on stage and screen, he put on the “Ritz” better than anyone. Ross possesses the same qualities, so he is the ideal person to remind us that “Puttin’ On the Ritz” encompasses the elegance of intelligent and evocative lyrics, in impressive partnership with sophisticated piano arrangements
He begins the show off-stage and a cappella with Irving Berlin’s “Let’s Face the Music and Dance,” meditative and foreboding. There is plenty of joy, rhythm and fun to come, but this opener indicates that Ross not only presents the songs with love and respect, but also with the depth that comes from study and understanding.
In the flowing mystery of “Dancing in the Dark” (Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz), for example, he demonstrates the emotional underpinnings of foreshadowing. The complexity of the song is emphasized with his beautiful stress on the word “wonder,” in the line “We’re waltzing in the wonder of why we’re here.” Fred Astaire, who is said to have introduced more standards than any other performer, presented “Dancing in the Dark” in the stage production of The Bandwagon, repeating it in a memorable dance sequence with Cyd Charisse in the film version.
As Ross mentions, Astaire began his dancing career with his sister, Adele, who later left the act to marry an English nobleman and live in Ireland. Ross reflects their era together with Irving Berlin’s “The Ragtime Violin” and “When the Midnight Choo-Choo Leaves for Alabam’.” He tells us that there was not really an Alabama-bound train that departed at midnight—it left at 12:19 AM—but that would make for an awkward song title. These two fetching tunes were performed by Astaire with Judy Garland in Easter Parade.
With eloquent bass accompaniment by Brian Cassier, Ross has arranged over thirty songs into sections. He includes some of the most romantic songs. Not many can surpass these three in expressing love: George and Ira Gershwin’s “They Can’t Take that Away from Me”with its air of resignation, “The Way You Look Tonight” (Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields), and Cole Porter’s bittersweet “After You, Who?” Porter also wrote the song Steve Ross’s parents courted to, “Night and Day.” Admitting to being an Anglophile, like Astaire, Ross includes a London segment, with Porter’s mischievous witty tale of the unsuccessful hostess, “Thank You So Much, Mrs. Lowsborough-Goodby.”
He is driving and dauntless on piano with the multiple rhythms of “Fascinatin’ Rhythm” and “Oh, Lady Be Good,” both by George and Ira Gershwin. Irving Berlin’s engaging “Let Yourself Go” and “Cheek to Cheek” are tantalizing. I was reminded that Astaire sang the appealingBert Kalmar and Harold Ruby tune “Nevertheless (I’m in Love with You)” in Three Little Words when Ross chose it for his encore the night I attended.
Debonair, dedicated and talented, Steve Ross demonstrates why cabaret still continues to endure. He is a reminder of why aficionados continue to support its promise and highest achievements.
