Column: The Purist
Transcendental Meditation is a demanding companion. I started TM just a year ago because, outwardly, enough people told me I should; and inwardly, because I knew I needed something deep within to slow down the speed of my mind and the pace of my days, and even find some comfort and pleasure far inside myself. […]
Playbill: Melissa Errico Trips the Light Fantastic With Stephen Sondheim—Or Is It the Light Fandango?
Mr. Stephen Sondheim recently came backstage after the final performance at the 92 Street Y Lyrics & Lyricists production of Wordplay, written and hosted by Ted Chapin, gracing us all with warmth and positivity. With due reverence and never taking his presence for granted, I greeted him with (and this is something of a running joke between us), “You […]
Swept Up in the Whirlwind Known as Michel Legrand
I still hear Michel Legrand’s voice in my head: “Melissa! Hurry! Come!” It was morning at the Music Box Theater, an early rehearsal during the first previews of his 2002 Broadway musical “Amour.” It was 10:01 a.m., and we were all moving slowly, nursing coffee cups in the palms of our hands. We had performed […]
Sondheim Sublime: The Liner Notes
The first time I sang for Stephen Sondheim I was in the bath. Raul Esparza and I were doing Sunday in the Park with George at the Kennedy Center, and I played Dot, who is a painter’s model to the greatest of dot-makers, Georges Seurat. I had been an art history major in college and, […]
The Purist: Singing the Sublime
Being an actor is a hard life, and a strange life. But those of us who are musical theater actors cannot imagine our lives, cannot imagine the experience of being an actor at all, without the influence of Stephen Sondheim.
I Love Performing Those Songs. But What About the Gender Politics?
“It’s problematic,” my millennial co-star whispered grimly. “The misogyny in this musical.” “Which moment of misogyny?” I asked cautiously. We were sitting in the corner of the theater, on the first day of rehearsal for the current revival of Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane’s 1965 musical “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever,” now […]
Column: The Purist
It was green with white lines from the very beginning. Just over 20 years ago, I set foot in the world of professional tennis. I was 25 years old and had been set up to meet Patrick McEnroe, a boy I had grown up with and had known since I was 4. From the evening […]
Column: The Purist
All over the world, people take time off. Thousands of people right this minute are either upside down on mats on yoga retreats or upside down under tables in Napa Valley. I have a tendency to spot where pleasure can go, but not make room for it, to say “I love going to hear live […]
The Clyde Fitch Report: Singing Sondheim in the Age of Donald Trump
“I’m going to undertake a Sondheim show.” The first thing you notice when you announce that is how many opinions your friends and colleagues and fans have about his music. “What are you singing that’s rare?” you hear, as well as “Do you know this song that was cut from…?,” and all that sort of […]
Column: The Purist
Spring cleaning makes me think of my messy makeup drawers, or all the size 4 dresses that are sitting there and probably never going to fit again. Time to clean a little, make space for the new. Important no doubt, but an experience with my 9-year old and her teacher rises to the top and […]
Column: The New York Times
Broadway people spend most of their lives as people not on Broadway. A minority of actors make it to New York’s biggest stage, and a further minority of those who do are there now. One need only to have starred in a Broadway musical a year (or 20 years) ago to be billed as a […]
Column: NYMetro Parents
How I juggled motherhood with a dream role in a special musical. My kids regularly see me get ready for auditions, dressing up like a lawyer or the Queen of England, only to come home later and say I might not have gotten the job. We laugh. It’s Mommy’s life. They have learned that actors […]