STAGE REVIEW : ‘Call Me Ethel!’ Hits Merman’s High Notes

First you hear the voice, talking to us from backstage at the Pasadena Playhouse’s Balcony Theatre. And, yes, it sounds just like Ethel Merman. It has the right piercing sound, the flat, nasal vowels, the right brassy inflections.

Yet when Rita McKenzie comes out on stage in her one-woman show, “Call Me Ethel!,” belting “A Lady With a Song,” there is something slightly animatronic in the look-alike.

It’s Ethel all right and McKenzie, as George Gershwin said of Merman, can also “hold a note longer than Chase Manhattan Bank.” But the body’s a bit too rigid. The ultra-arched eyebrows, the staring eyes, the reverse akimbo of the arms--elbows bent, thumbs and fingers pinched, palms facing upward--seem too fixed. Too unchanging. Too intent. Eventually McKenzie, to her credit, infuses real blood into this initial quasi caricature, but it takes a little time.

What helps the transformation along, even more than the singing (which is the unquestioned triumph of McKenzie’s act), is the patter written by McKenzie with her director, Christopher Powich. It has a spontaneous feel rarely achieved in singing and talking one-person shows that leans heavily on punchy and significant one-liners: her own, and the endless witticisms of the Cole Porters, George and Ira Gershwins, Irving Berlins and Jule Stynes reacting to her unprecedented voice and style.

The show’s first half relies on these relationships to define the Merman character. It’s a direct address either to her agent “Louie” or to “Irving” (Berlin) or to the audience itself. What we get is a portrait of the supersecretary who could take dictation at 120 words a minute (“That’s faster than I talk”); the budding singer who suggested quickening the tempo of “I Got Rhythm” on her first audition with the Gershwins; the Merman who dated Winthrop Rockefeller “trying to compound a little interest”; the putdown artist who had a cutting word--real or apocryphal--for every occasion (“There’s nothing wrong with Hollywood that an earthquake couldn’t cure”) and who could make even a compliment sound insulting (about Mary Martin: “She’s all right, if you like talent”). The vision is one of down-to-earth acerbity--crisp, arch, cold, informative and brittle to the breaking point.

It’s in the second half that things warm up. That’s where McKenzie’s Merman becomes a more dimensional portrait, that of the oft-married “Queen of the Singing Announcers” who rolled with the disappointments (among them a daughter’s death from pills and alcohol, and a son’s alienation). We see the Merman who didn’t get Mama Rose when “Gypsy” became a movie (Roz Russell did and don’t you forget it), the very private star with the fading career who spends one afternoon each week working in the gift shop of a Manhattan hospital.

Even the songs in this half are at once more spectacular and softer. McKenzie’s extended focus on “Gypsy,” her renditions of “Rose’s Turn” are icons for the character she is playing. In these words and this music we forget ourselves, reliving the moment with Merman rather than McKenzie. The blasting of the Merman trademarks (“There’s No Business Like Show Business”) which gives way just before the intermission to some tamer music (“I Get a Kick Out of You”) is enlarged and enriched.

It’s no longer just the voice and the look that make McKenzie, pound for pound, La Merman. It’s a slow psychological immersion. We almost forget that her only accompaniment is the nimble piano of Peter Blue. The patter continues to be rich, even though it chooses, at some peril, to skim over the darker aspects of the personality.

The real Merman was far more difficult and merciless than McKenzie would have us believe. By any definition, hers is an air-brushed portrait of the singer that rides on the high and happier points of a turbulent life rather than the more challenging negative ones.

It’s a choice, probably made with nightclub dates in mind, where the audience is more easily satisfied with fast takes. (This show played the Cinegrill last fall.) But McKenzie also proves here that she can paint a better portrait as the evening builds. And even though “Call Me Ethel!” finally does pack quite a punch, it could pack an even bigger one with some creative rethinking.

At the Pasadena Playhouse Balcony Theatre, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Tuesdays through Saturdays, 8:30 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m., with matinees Saturdays at 5:30 and Sundays at 2:30. Until April 30. Tickets: $22; (818) 356-PLAY.