Melissa Sings Sondheim
54 Below
November/December 2017

Her familiarity with the way the songs work to advance character and story in vivo naturally informs her in vitro style, which is actorly to begin with. The hysterical bridal lament “Getting Married Today,” from “Company,” found her crawling around the floor of the cabaret’s tiny stage before winding up cocooned under the piano while her inventive accompanist, Tedd Firth, played on. Her fierce “Loving You” from “Passion” — she also sang two gorgeous duets from that show with Ryan Silverman — brought unusual attention to the two distinct thoughts often blurred in the line “I will live and I would die for you.

That attention to the lyrics and their rush of harsh “wisdoms” was Ms. Errico’s keynote. She refreshed the cabaret staple “The Miller’s Son,” from “A Little Night Music,” by setting up each of its three verses as a different escape fantasy. In a lightly jazzed “Not While I’m Around,” from “Sweeney Todd,” she demonstrated how the meaning that is locked in tiny verbal gestures can be released with bold phrasing. (“I don’t need to, I would never / Hide a thing from you / Like some.”)
And in her reading of “Children Will Listen,” from “Into the Woods,” you could actually hear the punctuation as she sang “Wishes come true, not free.”..."
- NY TIMES

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