"What a time I've had! I'm not complaining. I'm bragging!"

She is still peppery and provocative but there is indication that Elaine Stritch is mellowing, aware of time passing and gratefully acknowledging the help she has received in her career. She rules the Café Carlyle through the month of January, with a new show, Singin’ Sondheim...One Song at a Time. Not that Stephen Sondheim is a new project for her. Stritch made her Broadway bones in Company offering the snide observations of "The Little Things You Do Together" and dissing "The Ladies Who Lunch," including her own character, Joanne, making it a song she has owned ever since.

With the age of 85 now in sight, Stritch selected 13 classics by Sondheim, almost an octogenarian himself, and stitches his views and complexities into her own life, presenting them from a mature perspective. In "Send in the Clowns," she is reflective, vulnerable with her acceptance of passing life's idiosyncrasies. She adds to her interpretation the story of her husband, actor John Bay, who had performed a send-up of the song in London, with Sondheim's consent. "And it was good!" she remembers with a smile. Her show's closer is "The Best Thing That Ever  Has Happened," (Road Show/Bounce), a song that can be interpreted many ways, but Stritch directs it to the audience.

To open the show, Stritch could have selected "Everybody Says Don't" (Anyone Can Whistle), which she sings later. That would be a perfectly predictable Stritch opener with its advice, "Well, I say try!" Stritch tried. She opened with "I Feel Pretty" from West Side Story and it worked. For her, it is no longer an ingénue's anthem but the veteran performer's whimsical recognition that, while her looks are no longer so pretty, and she speak-sings, she still has a lot of pizzazz and can act like hell. Then she turns on a dime to sock out a Broadway classic she has never performed in theater, the obsessed and intensely dramatic "Rose's Turn" from Gypsy.

Similarly, she views "Broadway Baby," her own showstopper from Follies in Concert at Lincoln Center, first remembering the wannabe's yearning but then evolving into a fierce demand of frustration and determination. It was good to hear some earlier Sondheim works like "Love Is in the Air," cut from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and "A Parade in Town" from Anyone Can Whistle.

The highpoint of the show is offered without music.  She recites "Every Day a Little Death" (A Little Night Music), interpreting the resentment of the dragoon's embittered wife with acute intensity.

Stritch's long-time Musical Director and pianist, Rob Bowman, leads a six-man band with Jonathan Tunick's arrangements.

There were a few pauses and fumbles but these did not tarnish the energy and excitement that Stritch always engenders. Elaine Stritch remains the definition of a showstopper, Singin’ Sondheim...One Song at a Time.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Cabaret Scenes
January 6, 2010
www.cabaretscenes.org