At 77, Rita Moreno is keenly aware that she has retained the attractiveness of her youth spent navigating Hollywood and the Great White Way. At the new Conga Room in the L.A. Live complex,her interpretation of “Fever,” part of two song tribute to Peggy Lee, found her writhing on the piano as if she were sharing a bed with a lover, her face flush from the blood surge of passion. Whew! She knows a few guys could use a hosing down after the perf.
Moreno was making a rare West Coast visit and bringing with her a show she debuted at the Cafe Carlyle two years ago. The songs, many of which she believes the audience has never heard, have been enhanced with the stories from the Caryle engagement and anecdotes from her life, dating back to her childhood, meeting her husband’s family about 45 years ago and her “Sunset Blvd.” experiences. “West Side Story” does not come up.
The songs position her as a Broadway baby, a New Yorker via Puerto Rico enamored of theater and theater people. She mixes the brassy and the sassy, always in key, never straining and continually in control. With a diva’s confidence she takes 90 minutes to venture from patter songs (“But Alive” from “Applause”) to scat (“Breezin’ Along With the Breeze” from the 1920s) to a show-stopper (“I Never Has Seen Snow” from Harold Arlen and Truman Capote’s “House of Flowers”) to an aguinaldo, the fast-tempo Christmas songs she grew up with.
The colorful Conga Room, which generally books Latin artists who inspire dancing, perplexed Moreno when she first saw it. With the open floor filled with rows of temporary seating the club took on the feel of an intimate concert hall, which pleasantly reproduced the sound of her gifted trio.
