If you were to ask a modern day student what they know about WW1, they probably would give you a short answer seeing as it is rarely taught nowadays.

Powerhouse Broadway performer Melissa Errico wants to change that and has done so brilliantly with her own creation entitled The Story of A Rose: A Musical Reverie on the Great War. Complete with a seven piece orchestra, superb arrangements by Tedd Firth, and mostly top notch technical elements, this show does a lot to teach us all about a forgotten generation of military and the time period in general.

Ms. Errico frames the show around her great Aunt Rose who was a performer in the famed Ziegfeld Follies. As she performs many famous period songs like “Over There” and Funiculi, Funicula, she also regales us with many stories about the time period. I was particularly shocked to learn that composer Jerome Kern was so drunk one morning that he overslept and missed his sailing on the doomed Lusitania. Can you imagine how musical theatre would have been if he had stayed sober the previous night?