"If any show in the 92nd Street Y’s Lyrics and Lyricists series looked like a sure thing, it was “Fred and Ginger in So Many Words: The Astaire-Rogers Songbook,” which had five performances, Saturday through Monday at the Kaufmann Concert Hall. Written and hosted by the series' artistic director, Deborah Grace Winer, it offered filet mignon for an audience that becomes restive when the programming strays from the great American songbook’s main composers, and chicken is the entree.It would have been enough just to present the songs (11 of which were written by Irving Berlin) with the cast assembled by Ms. Winer: James Naughton, Debby Boone, Billy Stritch, Karen Ziemba and David Elder, performing with an excellent swing quintet led by John Oddo. The bearnaise sauce, if you will, was Ms. Winer’s insightful narration, which went considerably deeper than the anecdotal minihistories that accompany most of the series’ programs."
Astaire and Rogers--but especially Astaire--are ample enough cultural achievements to justify Hollywood in perpetuity. If no other film were ever made, Top Hat would suffice. Baryshnikov once remarked that all a dancer had to do was to watch Astaire to realize he should have been in another business.
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