Suzanne Rand, who worked with John Monteith in a comedy team that was often compared to the groundbreaking Mike Nichols and Elaine May — and that, like them, became the stars of a two-person Broadway show — died on April 2 in Manhattan. She was 75.
Ruben Rand, her stepson, confirmed the death, in a rehabilitation facility. The cause was cardiopulmonary arrest.
Ms. Rand and Mr. Monteith — she was the exuberant one; he was the more low-key partner — had backgrounds in improvisational comedy when they formed their act in 1976. Their sketches included Ms. Rand’s portrayal of a guilt-ridden fly killer who tries to revive a swatted pest, and the two of them as movie critics assigned to review a pornographic film who then mimic its action.
They built sketches around suggestions from the audience — settings, pet peeves, objects, occupations, film and television genres — and performed scripted material.
Their male-female partnership and their quick repartee led to comparisons with Nichols and May, who met in the 1950s and whose collection of wry, savvy and satirical improvisations, “An Evening With Mike Nichols and Elaine May,” reached Broadway in October 1960 and ran for 306 performances.
Ms. Rand and Mr. Monteith were thrilled that critics and audiences saw something of Nichols and May in their work. But they themselves saw some differences.
“Nichols and May came across more like neurotics trying to deal with the world,” Ms. Rand told The Plain Dealer of Cleveland in 1984, “while I feel that we view ourselves as two people dealing with a neurotic world.”
In 1978, Monteith and Rand were warmly welcomed at Manhattan clubs like Reno Sweeney and the Bottom Line, and at the Off Off Broadway Theater East.
“To be sure, some of their material is likely to stick in the mind more than others,” Thomas Lask wrote in a review of their Theater East show in The New York Times. “My own favorite is Miss Rand’s solo encounter with a marijuana-smoking bee, never seen but aurally very visible.”
That September, they got the call all comedians coveted: Johnny Carson wanted them on “The Tonight Show.” They performed on Oct. 5, the first of their two appearances on the show.
Their success at Theater East led James Lipton, the future host of “Inside the Actors Studio,” who was then a producer, to take them to a higher theatrical realm.
“He took us to Elaine’s and said, ‘I’m moving them to Broadway,’” said Bill Russell, who helped put Mr. Monteith and Ms. Rand together and for many years was their assistant, working on their sound and lighting.
The show opened in January 1979. The reviews were good, but it was not a hit: It closed after 79 performances.
They reprised their act for a Showtime cable special that year and for three public television shows in 1985.
One of their fans was the conductor Leonard Bernstein, whose son, Alexander, said he invited them to his apartment at the Dakota in Manhattan.
“He was sure they were about to collaborate on something,” Alexander Bernstein said in an email. But they never did.
Suzanne Lorraine Eckmann was born on Sept. 8, 1949, in Chicago and grew up in nearby Highland Park with her mother, Flora, and her father, William, who worked at companies that produced films for television and later worked for the State of Illinois.
Suzanne made her acting debut at age 4 as Queen Esther in a nursery school Purim show. As a teenager, she sang in nightclubs and at charity events. She attended Stephens College in Columbia, Mo., and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in theater in 1971.
She was hired at the Second City, the celebrated improvisational theater in Chicago, but she did not enjoy her short stay there.
“I had a miserable time,” she told The Times in 1978, adding, “It’s a wonderful place if you have a background, but you can’t learn there.”
In 1972 she moved to another improvisational company, the Proposition in Cambridge, Mass., where she met Mr. Monteith. They joined forces and, in 1976, were the warm-up act for the singers Janet Hood and Linda Langford, who performed as Jade & Sarsaparilla. Eventually, Monteith and Rand became headliners.
They broke up in the early 1990s, Mr. Russell said, although he added in an interview: “I’m not sure what happened. I think the gigs just dried up.”
In addition to her stepson, from her relationship with Lanny Rand, a restaurant manager who died in 2020, Ms. Rand is survived by her brother, William Eckmann.
Ms. Rand’s work fell off after she split with Mr. Monteith, who taught improvisation at the HB Studio in Manhattan for 25 years and died in 2018. She did voice-over work for advertisers and worked with Summer Salt, a group of writers and improvisers who meet every summer in Chatham, Mass., helping them tinker with scenes for new plays, screenplays, TV scripts and sketches.
Jeffrey Sweet, director of Summer Salt’s Improv to Script program, recalled how Ms. Rand once displayed her quick wit by resolving a problem in a proposed play. When a bride falls off a mountain and dies on the Friday before her wedding, the groom matter-of-factly tells their immediate families that he’s going to hold a celebration of life for her instead — without informing the guests flying in from all over about her death.
“The family around him is appalled,” Mr. Sweet said in an interview. “Somebody says, ‘When people show up, what on earth will we say to them?’
“And Suzanne said, ‘Chicken or fish?’”
