Since its beginnings forty years ago, the 92^nd Street Y’s Lyrics & Lyricists evenings have featured the work of individual writers. That roster is slimming, and increasingly today, under the series’ imaginative artistic director, Deborah Grace Winer, the L&L shows are built around concepts that can include the work of several lyricists. This was the case at the March offering: songs created by a Who’s Who of writers specifically for the movies of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

These songs, said Deborah – who also provided the evening’s narration – were the “gold standard” numbers by Irving Berlin, the Gershwins, Lerner and Lane, Dietz and Schwartz, Mercer, Youmans, Hammerstein and Harbach and more.

(Quick quiz: What was the song that Astaire danced to on the ceiling? Who wrote it? What movie?)

The performers, for the most part, did well by the material. Top of the troupe was Billy Stritch, not only at the piano but also showing growing strength as a singing soloist on such numbers as “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” and “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.” Karen Ziemba and an L&L newcomer, David Elder, were charming as they sang and danced. Star guests Debby Boone and James Naughton were … well, competently themselves. John Oddo led a fresh-sounding band that included scrumptious guitar work by Bucky Pizzarelli.

Song after song evoked sigh after sigh of contentment and recognition among the audience as the numbers evoked the grace, lightness and humor of the stars and their dancing.

(Quick Quiz answer: “You’re All the World to Me,” lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, music by Burton Lane, from Royal Wedding.)

Peter Haas
Cabaret Scenes
March 21, 2010
www.cabaretscenes.org