Picture: Stacy Sullivan
Back On The Town: Steve Ross at The Pheasantry, London.
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Ol’ Man River just keeps rollin’ along and so does Ol’ Man Steve Ross… not just rolling along well into his ninth decade but producing a non-stop feast of piano mastery and wit coupled with an unparalleled knowledge of the Great American Songbook.
Yes, the Prince of Manhattan cabaret was back in town for a three-night residency at famed Kings Road cabaret room The Pheasantry and he’s still right at the top of his game.
Forty years on from his London debut at the much-loved Pizza on the Park, the elegant Ross took his audience on a breathtaking 80-minute journey through two dozen wonderful songs, some sad, some comic, all nostalgic, from masters of their craft like Irving Berlin, Cole Porter and Noel Coward to less familiar names such as John Wallowitch, Carol Hall, Jim Croce, Nancy Ford and Gretchen Cryer.
It was Berlin who wrote the line “I know a fine way to treat a Steinway” and it was Ross’ love affair with the Pheasantry’s gorgeous Steinway that made his ten-minute, seven-tune medley ‘Piano Pour Piaf’ extra special, those magical fingers also working overtime on a piano-only treatment of Porter’s ‘Begin the Beguine’.
The voice may be less strong than 40 years ago but the voice was never the reason for going to see him anyway, rather it was his timing and the way he used the voice to illustrate his material. When you see Ross, you never come away empty-handed, you come away learning things or else eager to discover why some obscure song or lesser-known songwriter was being featured.
For example, Wallowitch, the writer of ‘This Moment’, the beautiful ballad Ross chose for his encore, once sang at the Pizza on the Park himself and the 1999 documentary Wallowitch and Ross: This Moment was Oscar-nominated, the Ross of the title not being Steve but Bertram Ross, Wallowitch’s lifetime partner and modern dance legend.
The two songs with friendship as their theme were both created by women, ‘The Circle of Friends’ from the pen of Carol Hall of Best Little Whorehouse in Texas fame, and ‘Old Friend’, now a cabaret standard, from Ford and Cryer’s otherwise unmemorable 1978 musical I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking It On The Road.
And the lovely ‘some say yes, some say no’ joke Steve related with typical Jewish zest and inflection came via Fyvush Finkel, a star of Yiddish theatre who went on to join the original Broadway cast of Fiddler on the Roof in the mid-60s before graduating to play the lead role of Tevye in the touring version.
It was the funny songs giving Ross the opportunity to demonstrate his acting skills that were most memorable. ‘Hungry Women’, an Eddie Cantor number from 1928 lamenting the high cost of feeding his ravenous dates, and ‘The Dolphin’, about the aquatic over-sexuality of that fun-loving mammal, were a hoot.
Not forgetting the hilarious ‘Cohen Owes Me 97 Dollars’, an early Berlin written in 1915, and Coward’s waspish ‘Don’t Put Your Daughter On the Stage, Mrs Worthington’, written in 1947 as a general warning to all the mothers writing to him requesting his help in getting their offspring up the slippery ladder of showbusiness.
‘Cohen’ is about a dying businessman’s amazing recovery once his son has forced poor Cohen to pay his debt: “It’s all right to pass away/but when people start to pay/that’s no time for a businessman to die.”
In the 40 years I’ve been a Ross fan – exactly half my life – I have never enjoyed him more. At such an age, to do 80 minutes of singing, playing and storytelling in one hit and with barely a line forgotten or note off key ranks as truly a phenomenal feat.
But what happens to all these almost-forgotten gems once Ross hangs up his piano? Who is coming along to carry the torch for these century-old mini-masterpieces. You tell me.
Food for thought: laid end to end, would the pizzas Ross has sold for Pizza Express in the 40 years of their working relationship stretch from Knightsbridge to Chelsea?
Jeremy Chapman
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