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# Rick Skye gets under the skin of gay icon Liza Minnelli
- URL: https://www.scenemag.co.uk/rick-skye-gets-under-the-skin-of-gay-icon-liza-minnelli/
- Published: 2024-11-04T10:55:29.000Z
- Updated: 2024-11-04T10:55:29.000Z
- Description: For over two decades actor Rick Skye has been getting under the skin of gay icon Liza Minnelli but his career could have gone in a totally different direction. He hit the stage as a child as Max in the Sound of Music and his teacher told his mother: “this one’s a character.” At 14 […]
- Author: Brian Butler
- Tags: Musical Theatre, Theatre, Charing Cross Theatre, Liza Minnelli, Steven Brinberg

For over two decades actor **Rick Skye** has been getting under the skin of gay icon **Liza Minnelli** but his career could have gone in a totally different direction.

He hit the stage as a child as Max in the *Sound of Music* and his teacher told his mother: “this one’s a character.” At 14 he was studying ballet and tap and later at **New York University** he studied acting but also enrolled in the globally famous **Joffrey Ballet School**.

And he’s appeared with some of Broadway’s greatest leading ladies, including through a show called *The American Dance Machine* – we’re talking class here – Gwen Verdon, Sandy Duncan, Ann Reinking and Dorothy Louden.

After soap opera on TV, he auditioned for a show by singing Neil Sedaka’s *Breaking Up Is Hard To Do*, got the part and did three performances in New York. It just so happened Sedaka was in the audience and said to Rick: “oh you sing high like I do.” Thus started a friendship and led to Rick creating *The Flip Side of Neil Sedaka*, where he performed the singer’s hits and also the B-sides of his records.

![](https://www.scenemag.co.uk/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/img_2310-e1730717642502.jpg)

Rick Skye

The show also included impersonations of comedy characters. His London debut was courtesy of the **Theatre Museum**, and he appeared at the **Apollo Theatre**.

He had written a piece called *Mein Chair* – a pun on *Cabaret*’s *Mein Herr*, based on a routine Liza (and before her Fred Astaire) had done with a swivel chair.

It was liked and he was told to write ”more of that Liza stuff.” So what had started as a short fill-in act while other performers got changed became the phenomenon that Rick has created globally around the great lady.

But Rick is not just Liza. The multi award-winning performer has had hit revue after hit revue – including a comedic look at auditions for Mama Rose in *Gypsy*, played by drag queens, gigs in Edinburgh, Dublin and London’s West End and a wonderfully camp villainous portrayal of Kenny Canasta in Amazon Prime’s comedy *City And The Beast*.

But shows about Liza, about Judy and Liza and currently about Barbra and Liza, have taken him all over the world, and bring him to London this week for a short run at **Charing Cross Theatre**.

“It’s an affectionate tribute – it’s sentimental. The English like to adore stars but also see what’s funny about them. You are walking a tightrope – sending them up but also paying tribute,” he told me.

#### “It’s an affectionate tribute – it’s sentimental. The English like to adore stars but also see what’s funny about them.”

His current show *Barbra and Liza Live!* – with **Steven Brinberg** as Streisand – had its first outing in London in 2010, and they appeared again in 2018 at Piccadilly’s **Crazy Coqs**. Post-Covid the pair decided to run the show again.

At its dress rehearsal finale Rick had a heart attack, and needed a stent to be fitted. When he came out of the anaesthesia his first question to the doctor was “can I perform on stage next Monday?” And he did.

But he’s also a recent cancer survivor – thankfully now clear. But it meant five months of voice coaching. And a lot of physical rehab. “I’m feeling good – I’ve got my vocal muscles back to where they were.”

I wondered if he knew if Liza had seen his impersonation and if she approved. “I’ve been to her shows and met her and told her I loved her like everyone does. But I don’t think I’m on her radar,” he said.

“I try to do as good a job as possible to remind people how wonderful she is. I keep saying that I won’t do it anymore, but then new offers come along, and new bits get added to the show.”

I wondered what advice he’d give to the aspiring young Rick: “calm down. I’ve always been anxious about things, and everything worked out – just calm down.”

“When you’re a little gay kid, everything’s doubly nerve wracking. I was bullied from my first day at school – I was smaller and younger and a cissy to them. Times are different now. I’m just walking around as me. I don’t see the problem of who I am – it’s just me.”

Rick appears with Steven Brinberg in *Barbra and Liza Live!* at **Charing Cross Theatre** from **6-17 November**. Tickets – [charingcrosstheatre.co.uk](http://charingcrosstheatre.co.uk/?ref=scenemag.co.uk). Look out for my review in *Scene* magazine.