Melissa Errico
Broadway Baby: From Manhasset to Manhattan & Beyond
54 Below, NYC, November 2, 2023
Reviewed by Todd Sussman
Melissa Errico
Photo: David Kenas
Showbusiness is in Melissa Errico’s DNA. Her great aunt Rose was a Ziegfeld showgirl, and Melissa has clearly inherited the requisite sparkle and shine. It’s there in her shimmering gown, and it’s there in her eyes.
For this livestream event, she transmitted her best cabaret self: her ethereal soprano voice, her bubbly demeanor, and her personalized patter. Aligning with the show’s title, Broadway Baby, Errico mined the Great American Songbook for some of theater’s finest musical numbers, including Lerner & Loewe’s “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” and “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face,” both from My Fair Lady, Arlen & Mercer’s “Come Rain or Come Shine” from St. Louis Woman, Rogers & Hammerstein’s “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music, and Cole Porter’s “It’s All Right with Me,” originally from Can-Can and revived for High Society, which premiered on Broadway starring Ms. Errico.
Backed by her dynamic jazz trio and fronted by her mega-watt smile, she captured and then held our attention. Woven throughout the show were hints of “ingenudity”—a word Errico coined and defines as “a little bit of the erotic or naughty.” It manifested itself in her monologue (“I’ll have what she’s having”), in a lyric or two (including the closing line of Arthur Schwartz & Harold Dietz’s “Confession” (“I always go to bed at ten, but I go home at four”), and even in a sampling of flamenco dancing she offered later in the evening.
Speaking of the trio, David Finck on bass and Mark McLean on drums provided the level of accompaniment that any serious chanteuse would welcome. Then there was musical director Tedd Firth on piano. He poured his heart and soul—his whole self, actually—onto those keys, and with his trademark musicianship, he is something of a star in his own right. Luckily, his long association with Errico extends from her live outings to several of her studio recordings, including the forthcoming Sondheim in the City, due in 2024. During her set, Errico previewed the album (it will be her second all-Sondheim disc) by performing “Can That Boy Foxtrot!” (cut from Follies), “Take Me to The World” (from Evening Primrose), and “Broadway Baby” (from Follies). On “Take Me to the World,” she introduced the acoustic guitar of JC Maillard, who augmented the band’s sound with a touch of flamenco. On “Broadway Baby,” trumpeter Benny Benack III entered from stage right, surprising Errico, and helped to transform the song into a brassy, sassy showstopper.
Melissa Errico introduces Stephen Schwartz
Firth kindly vacated his seat at the piano so a very special guest could join the festivities, the über-talented songwriter, Stephen Schwartz. The wizard behind Wicked—now celebrating its 20th year on Broadway—played his “Meadowlark” from The Baker’s Wife as Melissa performed it, flawlessly, for the live audience, the cameras, and the songwriter himself! Then the two duetted on Schwartz’s beloved “For Good.” There is magic—Oz dust, if you will—in the way the words and the music of that song blend and then resonate. To hear the song (especially those three indelible end notes) played on the piano by the man who wrote it is something not even Wicked’s devout audiences get to see and hear too often.
In a nod to her daughter, Victoria, a teenager who favors Taylor Swift over the Songbook entries her mother is so fond of, Errico sang a snippet of Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down.” In the blink of an eye, she bravely (and humorously) switched from jazz to electropop. However, the underlying message of Swift’s song—tolerance and support of the LGBTQ+ community—was the perfect lead-in to her final number, “Day by Day” from Godspell. For that, Errico invited Stephen Schwartz back to the stage and directed the audience to sing along on this “prayer for peace” as she called it, adding, “We all need this.” She was right.
