Isn't it romantic?

Who: Steve Ross
What: Rhythm and Romance
Where: The Kranzberg Center, St. Louis
When: November 26 and 27, 2010

Renowned cabaret artist Steve Ross has a long and happy relationship with St. Louis, going back to the early days of the Grandel Cabaret Series. He was one of the first performers to be featured by Jim Dolan's Presenters Dolan organization when it got off the ground several years ago, and he even made a special trip to Mound City this past February to participate in a tribute cabaret for the late Chris Jackson. It's only appropriate, then, that he chose our fair city for a trial run of his latest show, Rhythm and Romance, which opens a three-week run at the Algonquin Hotel's Oak Room in January. Judging from the audience response, it was a good choice.

If you've seen Mr. Ross before, you already know that he's the very personification of savoir faire: a graceful, elegant, and charming performer in the mold of Noel Coward, whose green velvet smoking jacket (or, as he refers to it, his "non-smoking jacket") he now wears, courtesy of the Noel Coward society. Even when Mr. Ross made the occasional musical misstep (perhaps inevitable with a new show), his love of the material and his ability to connect with the audience carried him through and earned him a standing ovation at the end.

The evening opened with a lively medley combining the title song with Jimmy McHugh and Ted Koehler's "Spreadin' Rhythm Around" (both introduced in 1935 by Ella Fitzgerald and "Fats" Waller, respectively) and bits of Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm" and "Fascinatin' Rhythm". Mr. Ross followed that up with a set about seduction (Flanders and Swann's droll "Have Some Madeira, M'Dear") and marriage both sentimental (Kander and Ebb's "Married" and Kern and Hammerstein's "The Folks Who Live on the Hill") and sarcastic (Rodgers and Sondheim's "We're Gonna Be All Right", from Do I Hear a Waltz?).

The rest of the show continued in a similar vein, examining the varieties of romance, both comic and tragic. There was, as you might expect, plenty of Porter and Coward, but there was also Jacques Brel's dark "Fanette and I" and Ivor Novello's "And Her Mother Came Too", a comic look at a true "helicopter parent". There was even a set on the romance of travel, with Bob Merrill's rarely-heard "Mira" (from Carnival!) and a pair of Coward gems: "Sail Away" (from the 1960 flop of the same name) and, from 1955, the rudely hilarious "A Bar on the Piccola Marina", about the sexual awakening of the formerly staid Mrs. Wentworth Brewster.

As always, Mr. Ross intertwined the music with erudite and amusing commentary on the songs and their creators. Did you know, for example, that Noel Coward's wistful waltz ballad "Some Day I'll Find You" was the theme song for the long-running radio and early TV detective show Mr. Keene, Tracer of Lost Persons?* Or that Mr. Coward (who was a close friend of Cole Porter) responded to questions about a 1962 trip to a clinic for "rejuvenation shots" of sheep hormones by quipping "I've got ewe under my skin"?

Well, now you do.

If there's one lyricist who understood both the rhapsody and rue of romance, that would surely be the late Lorenz Hart, so it's only appropriate that Mr. Ross's show featured a generous helping of Rodgers and Hart numbers, including "My Romance" (from Jumbo, 1935) and "Glad to Be Unhappy" (On Your Toes, 1936). The set was punctuated by some dry-eyed looks at romance form Dorothy Parker – also very appropriate in a show destined for the Algonquin, where Ms. Parker was a regular guest at the fabled literary Round Table.

The show concluded with Mr. Ross's trademark Edith Piaf instrumental medley, followed by an encore that briefly recapped "Rhythm and Romance" and then segued into an affecting rendition of the 1934 classic "For All We Know". And a splendid time was had by all.

For more information on the peripatetic Mr. Ross, visit his web site at steveross.net. For more information on upcoming cabaret shows at the Kranzberg Center, visit The Presenters Dolan at presentersdolan.com and the Cabaret St. Louis site at cabaretstl.org.

*Or, for you Bob and Ray fans, Mr. Trace, Keener Than Most Persons.