Steve Ross – Riverhouse Barn, Walton-on-Thames

Steve Ross at the Riverhouse Barn, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Well, here’s a curiosity – legendary Steve Ross, the crown prince of New York cabaret, playing a gig out of town in front of an audience that for the most part had never seen him before, a very different crowd from his Pheasantry regulars.

In a long two-hour-plus set at the picturesque Riverhouse Barn at Walton-on-Thames, next door to The Swan where American composer Jerome Kern and proprietor’s daughter Eva met, Ross, now well into his 80s, showed tremendous stamina to go with his unrivalled knowledge of the Great American Songbook.

The Kern connection goes back to 1909 when the boat trip down the Thames he was taking with some friends stopped off at The Swan for some liquid refreshment. A year later he and Eva wed and Kern would usually stay at The Swan when in England.

Ross celebrated the Kern link with a stunning piano medley from Show Boat, Kern’s greatest work. It wasn’t the only piano medley in a packed programme. In the second half came a virtuoso run-through of Edith Piaf’s biggest hits, called ‘Piano for Piaf’, one of the high spots of the evening.

For the rest, Ross stuck mainly to his favourites, Irving Berlin, Fred Astaire, Cole Porter and Noel Coward, kicking off with a belting ‘Puttin’ On the Ritz’ and sharing with the audience the little titbit that great friends Porter and Coward shared the same boyfriend for a short time.

There was plenty of humour. Coward’s ‘Don’t Put Your Daughter on the Stage, Mrs Worthington’, and Eddie Cantor’s ‘Hungry Women’ were both delivered with panache. Ross, the great storyteller, came up with a couple of gems, one a very Jewish joke about marriage, the other with a lovely punchline about where the stuff for face fillers come from – “I’ve got you under my skin!”

On the other side of the coin, the infinite sadness of ‘Old Friend’ – written by Gretchen Cryer and Nancy Ford for an otherwise forgettable 1998 musical, I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road, almost had Ross in tears, never mind his audience.

Ross is teacher as well as performer and clearly loved showing a new audience what he has spent a lifetime mastering. He had a ball with Irving Berlin’s ‘I Love a Piano’ and you could see how much he relished playing Riverhouse Barn’s gorgeous piano. It was as if he never wanted to stop.

How did the gig come about? A singer-songwriter friend Andrew Brewis who lives in Walton, seeing Ross was coming over to do a two-night residency at The Pheasantry in Chelsea, suggested organising an extra date with this happy outcome. Although not the same programme as Ross’ London show Fred Astaire and Friends, the Walton set featured many of the same elements. The good folk of Walton-on-Thames certainly know who Steve Ross is now – and they loved it.

Jeremy Chapman