Review: MEL TORMÉ AT 100: A CELEBRATION WITH BILLY STRITCH AND NICOLAS KING at 54 Below A Winner

Cabaret and concert stalwarts Billy Stritch and Nicolas King debuted their new show last night at 54 Below, a tribute show honoring a musical great who has touched both their lives (and, frankly, the lives of anyone who takes an interest in the music of The Great American Songbook).   Mel Tormé at 100: A Celebration with Billy Stritch and Nicolas King may be a mouthful of a title, but it tells you exactly what you’re getting, and whether you are a fan of the legend given the moniker “The Velvet Fog” or just a fan of great live music, then this is the show for you.  Even if you have never heard of Mel Tormé, you can enjoy this musical cabaret for the sheer genius of the musical proficiency on the stage… You will have to sit through some lengthy script about Tormé and his effect on Stritch, King, and bassist Jay Leonhart to get to the music, but it’s worth it.   And if you have heard of Tormé or happen to know all his recordings by heart, you will enjoy all that text because most of the background onTormé comes from Stritch himself, who is one of the industry’s best storytellers.  There is always a risk, when doing a tribute show, that the script will play like a classroom or a Wikipedia page, but that doesn’t happen here because you can tell that Billy is talking about someone who means something to him.  He didn’t cobble together facts he researched for a production, he knows this stuff, and he’s excited to talk about it, and the way he talks is engaging and entertaining, and that’s what makes his monologues to the audience easy to enjoy, rather than text you listen to while pushing food around on your plate and waiting for the next song.  This is a celebration of all of Mel Tormé, not just the music.  And the stories are good.  They’re fun, they’re informative, and they’re a reflection on an artist who should be remembered on his 100th birthday, doggone it.  Particularly effective is the fact that Stritch and Leonhart actually knew the man, and their stories are sprinkled with that personal touch that turns an artist up on the stage into a person who is accessible to their audience.  

Nicolas King did not know Mel Tormé, but that doesn’t make his presence in the program superfluous.  As an entertainer who has leaned into this style of music, King has spent his life singing the songs of Mel Tormé, and he has personal stories of his own to share.  A segment about performing “Pick Yourself Up” with Mike Renzi at the Cabaret Convention is especially enjoyable because it gives us a glimpse into his close friendship with his one-time musical partner, and it shows us what Renzi was like as a musical director, as a friend, and as a man with wit.  It also proves that which every cabaret devotee knows and notices every time it happens: the stories are always more effective when there is a personal connection to the artist doing the storytelling.  Between Stritch’s Carnegie Hall reminiscence, Leonhart’s Jimmy Stewart anecdote, and King’s Mike Renzi remembrance, we get to know the men on the stage and how the man in the spotlight changed their lives.  That’s how to do a cabaret tribute show.

But cabaret tribute shows are about more than the script and the stories.  At their foundation, they are about the music.  And here, the music is beyond compare.  The music being performed at Mel Tormé At 100 is impeccable.  It’s more than impeccable, it’s thrilling.  It’s entertaining.  It’s satisfying.  The three gentlemen mentioned above and drummer Jakubu Griffin are playing at the top of their game.  They could actually remove all the dialogue and just play the music, and they’d have a great show.  Musically speaking, there is no improvement to be made in this song set.  Naturally enough, that starts with Billy Stritch, who has arranged and treated almost every song being performed, and for the numbers that are meticulous preservations of Tormé’s original treatments, Billy has done Mel quite lovingly proud.  He has crafted a program for himself and Nicolas that will delight and amaze.  The two headliners are well-mated in every way.  Nicolas King has finally found his perfect musical partner.  The gentleman worked with Mr. Renzi for many years, until his untimely death in 2021, and, with this artistic pairing, he has struck gold.  King is no stranger to duo shows, having worked with many respected artists, but frequently he has found himself onstage opposite either iconic women of cabaret who are of a more, shall we say, advanced glamour than his young self, or performers unable to rise to King’s skill set.  With the Stritch/King partnership, Nicolas is evenly matched.  The proficiency of both singers is breathtaking.  You’ve never heard such harmonies, outside of an Andrews Sisters concert (or ABBA, if that’s your thing) - it is staggering.  And Stritch, a bona fide jazz singer, has a right proper sparring partner for all the scat singing breaks.  The voices of both gents blend to palatable perfection.  And both men have different strengths to bring to the overall performance, rounding out the audience experience.   King is exciting to watch and hear, while Stritch is soothing.  Watching King throw himself about the stage while singing at such a level of excellence is gripping, and (speaking personally), there is an actual chemical change that comes over me any time that Billy Stritch sings.  Nicolas King is a roller coaster, while Billy Stritch is a schooner - one is captivating and the other is comforting.  They complement one another the way good artistic partnerships should.  And they’re both young, which gives the proceedings a youthful, playful, brotherly quality.  This is the partnership we have all been waiting for, though Stritch and King could, conceivably, add one more person to their team, and that would be a director or consultant, to smooth over some of the rough edges of their new show.

Billy Stritch needs no director when he is serving as MD for a headliner.  Neither does he need any guidance when he is appearing with The Billy Stritch Trio.  And Nicolas King, having been taught by masters, usually crafts his solo shows on his own, to success.  But this isn’t a Billy Stritch Trio show, and it isn’t a Nicolas King solo show, this is a Billy Stritch/Nicolas King duo show, and it needs another set of eyes out front - someone to say, “This story is running long,” or “That joke isn’t landing,” or “That segment doesn’t fit,” all of which would have been notes from this writer last night, had he been in the director’s chair.  Because the truth is that the show does feel a little long, Mr. King does lean into the loquacious, and a bit relating to the musical Beauty and the Beast does feel forced - an outside pair of eyes, and a gentle but firm director’s guidance, could shine a light on those facts for the two musical marvels.  

And marvel, the audience will, particularly over Stritch’s electrifying “You’re Driving Me Crazy” and King’s gorgeous “The Folks Who Live On The Hill,” which are only two of the evening highlights, to say nothing of the Wow factor brought to the proceedings by Billy’s performance of “Mountain Greenery.”  There are two epic medleys, one involving the moon and one involving mash-ups, and there is a revelatory duet of “A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square,” but the recreation of Tormé’s version of “Pick Yourself Up” is, alone, worth the price of admission.  Very familiar with King’s performance of this number, just before it happened last night, I turned to my table mate, a person not familiar with Tormé’s work, and blurted out, “This will blow your mind,” and, afterward, she enthusiastically nodded her head and mouthed the words, “Oh, yeah.”  King has not performed the number since Renzi died, and thank goodness he has Stritch beside him to bring it back to the light for all the audiences who deserve to witness it.  This writer thinks it’s time for the performance to have an encore at the Cabaret Convention, where Billy and Nicolas are regulars.  

From tip to tail, the musical programming of the Tormé tribute show is a winner, and so is the show as a whole.   It’s elegant, suave, sophisticated, and debonair, just like the boys bringing it to life.  To use a word that was thrown out last night by the gentlemen, themselves, it is spiffy.  It is definitely worth a look, and most definitely worth a future life, and since the next year is Mel’s 100th (Tormé was born today, September 13th), this writer hopes Billy and Nicolas take it to every club that will have them because audiences will go home sated and elated, and well they should.

Mel Tormé at 100: A Celebration with Billy Stritch and Nicolas King plays 54 Below again at 7 pm on September 14th.   Tickets can be had HERE.

Billy Stritch has a website HERE.

Nicolas King’s website is HERE.

Photos by Stephen Mosher