Following the virtual sell-out of her November 17 and 18 Melissa Errico Sings Sondheim concert dates at at Feinstein’s/54 Below supper club in New York city, the actor-singer added a third performance, 7 PM December 4.
Tony Award nominee Errico, who sold out the same venue in June, told Playbill “I’m thrilled that there’s been such an enthusiastic response to my singing Sondheim. It’s a tribute to Steve, to his music, and to the appetite we all have now, in this troubled time, for work of seriousness and soul.”
She said she’s grateful for the chance to bring her concert back to Manhattan. “It had that excitement of something that would happen once, and be over in a flash! And now we get to do it again!”
The star of Broadway’s Amour (Tony Award nomination), High Society, and Irving Berlin’s White Christmas has performed in composer Stephen Sondheim’s musicals regionally and Off-Broadway (Do I Hear a Waltz?, Passion).
Nevertheless, she said she felt she needed to do extensive research on the composer for the cabaret show. “I watched and listened to everything I could get my hands on about Sondheim. The more I learned, the more I admired him. I think he represents the very best of all that is intelligent, ironic, introspective, skeptical, urban and cosmopolitan. And within his musicals, hidden in the stories, sitting like a solid truth under the music, is the celebration and confidence of the outsider. I've even started to deeply regret not having a career in the 1970s when he was just reaching his maturity—and could have written something for me! I was newborn then, so I really did miss all the fun. But there is good fortune in being able to retrospect his work: I am in the very early stages of planning my next solo studio album to be recorded in the spring. Produced by Rob Mathes, it will be all Sondheim.”
She has had the privilege of working for the composer of Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music and other modern Broadway landmarks, playing Dot in a Kennedy Center production of his Sunday in the Park With George. She says, “The first time I sang for Stephen Sondheim I was in a rehearsal room at the Kennedy Center—fully clothed but lying in an empty bathtub, singing the ‘Color & Light’ sequence. I was playing Dot opposite Raul Esparza, whom I had only met a few days before. We had to dive straight into rehearsal. I remember Raul’s reaction when Steve came in. He became even more passionate and inspired, as he was already singing that manic music ‘red, red, red, red....’ I remember feeling excited and a little bit foolish, pretending to be kicking bubbles in a bath.”
And that’s when she took a chance that led to Sondheim changing one of his lyrics for her. “Having Dot nude in the bathtub in the number was, I’ll confess, my own idea. Looking back, I’m a little embarrassed that I wasn’t yet sufficiently knowledgeable about Sondheim to know that you weren’t supposed to suggest alterations like that. I was aware that the bathtub was a bold idea—but I also knew that Impressionist paintings were, historically, full of nude girls in bathtubs. (I was an art history major in college.) My concept was that Dot's nudity would be unashamed and might even accent the rejection when George chooses to cancel their date-night in order to finish the damn hat.
“I took it for granted that Mr. Sondheim would be glad to see a Dot frolicking, Follies-style, in make-believe water instead of at her makeup table, as in the iconic Bernadette Peters performance. I hadn't had time to discuss this concept with him, and being that I was already in a tub, it seemed a bit late to start the discussion. So, I guess the answer is: the first time I sang for him I was, more or less, ‘singing in the shower.’ Fortunately, he liked the idea, and actually altered the lyrics to make them fit the bathtub: after debating ‘more soap,’ he went with ‘more scent.’
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