“As much a valentine to this city as any Woody Allen film with half the neurosis.”
Sometime in May of this year, I started writing for Broadway World. The first review I did of a virtual event (remember virtual events?) was a review of IL PARLE, ELLE CHANTE: MYSTERY which featured Melissa Errico, Adam Gopnik, and Tedd Firth at the piano. In a wonderfully full-circle moment, here we are 6 months and some 85 reviews later sitting live and in person at 54 Below watching Melissa Errico with Tedd Firth at the piano, with literary quotes by Adam Gopnik.
“75 minutes that is clever, passionate, witty, touching, romantic, and complex. Just like the city that inspired it.”
In this case, the opus is Melissa Errico’s new show, Melissa Errico SINGS HER NEW YORK, which was having its second performance at 54 Below. At its heart, it is not a show about New York, or songs about New York, although both of those things are prominently featured. Rather it is about one woman’s lifelong experience of New York City, with all of the dreams, obsessions, joys, heartbreaks, terror, and rapture that come with living, working, and loving in the world’s most exciting and most irritating city. It is about a woman who made the short journey from Long Island with nothing but some dance shoes, a voice, and a dream and acquired a home, friends, a career, a husband, and a family, along with a journal full of memories and experiences. In short, a life.