Interview: Melissa Errico Talks Singing Sondheim at Feinstein's/54 Below and the Composer's Warmth/Ruthlessness

Melissa Errico is no stranger to Stephen Sondheim. She played Dot/Marie at The Kennedy Center in the first revival of SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE, Clara in PASSION in 2013 Off-Broadway, and, most recently, Leona in New York City Center's production of DO I HEAR A WALTZ?.

Three shows and many performances later, Errico has become a major interpreter of the composer's work, daring but reverent, and hyper-focused on all of the minutiae and layers found per page of just one song. On June 3 (and two more dates in November), she will bring her MELISSA ERRICO SINGS SONDHEIM to Feinstein's/54 Below for its New York debut, following raves from its original incarnation in Washington, D.C. In between rehearsals prior to the show, we discussed her subliminal start on Sondheim, the composer's "warmth [and] ruthlessness," and how his work may or may not be a religion.

This interview has been edited for content and length.

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Going back to the very beginning, I want to hear what your introduction to Sondheim was.

Oh, my introduction to Sondheim, in terms of listening to it, was probably Barbra Streisand's record. I heard "Send in the Clowns" or anything from her Broadway record. I wouldn't have known I was listening to Sondheim; that would've been subliminally. But the first time it got into my life was when I was in the workshop production of AMOUR with Michel Legrand, and it was directed by James Lapine and Sondheim came to watch it. There was sort of like an, "Oh my god" atmosphere that spread through the whole room, so my first encounter would've been this feeling like an extraterrestrial creature was in the room, essentially, like there was this radioactive light coming from the crowd. Everybody was talking about it.

That lead to me getting cast in SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE. I didn't know anything about SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE and I had a meeting with Sondheim and the director Eric Schaeffer. The first time I was actually significantly being considered for a job was a job I was already getting because of the workshop with James Lapine. One thing lead to another. So I got that part, which I would go to Washington and it was the first revival and it was very exciting. They said I was going to be wearing all of Bernadette [Peters]'s clothing, which was overwhelming because my introduction to Sondheim may have been a little bit harder to describe (subliminally, [as I said], maybe Judy Collins singing "Send in the Clowns" on the radio--- I'm not really even sure I put it all together). But Bernadette, I could put that together. Like, "Oh, this is a part she's played." That started making it more like, "This is stuff I should know and this is exciting."

Knowing I was going to wear her clothes and I was going to [be in] the part, it's the first major revival that'd ever happened... I was kind of eyeballs popping, like, "Okay, this is coming." I got a phone call from my father, who's a concert pianist, right after that meeting and he said, "I know you don't start for eight weeks, but you better start learning it now. This is hard." I was like, "What? I've never done that in my whole career!" He was like, "No, no, you've got to start studying it now. You're good, but you're not that good."

Like, "You don't understand!"

"You don't understand." So that was sort of a different kind of introduction to Sondheim insofar as it came in a form of kind of a miracle of getting a part and a sense that everybody was excited for him to be in the room, to meeting him, to Bernadette, to my dad saying, "Watch out, this is hard." I remember having the... not the fun taken out of it by my dad, but the sense of like, "If you're going to try to do this well, you've got to get working."

Putting it into perspective.

Well, you've got to go do the work. Everything's 6/8 bar--- I mean, it's all upside-down. It's all difficult. There's an interesting and a difficult musical thing on every page.

That's always been kind of a double-edged sword for musicians. It's difficult to the point where some people avoid it during auditions, but it's beautiful music.

Yeah. I'm not that afraid of difficult things, but I was glad to be warned it was difficult. One of the things I loved about Michel Legrand's music is that it's so chromatic that. Everybody sings, "What are you doing for the rest of your life?" Everybody sings that wrong--- like, everybody. They all get on stage and they just do that ascending line wrong. I like things that are tricky, so I'm going to say that while I'm alert, I'm not alarmed.

What is it about his music and his lyrics that resonate with you so much?

Oh... I think some people would always obsess on his lyrics, and I think that he's one of the great melodists. I think the music sometimes, like with "Loving You" or certain bridges...in songs like "Everybody Loves Louis," there's a romance and a beauty that's all the more beautiful for being couched in a song that has so much neurosis. This core comes in for the top of only two pages, but it's like so beautiful on a melodic level. So the melodies for me are much more romantic and beautiful, and that would maybe not be the first adjective a lot of people would think of. I see so much warmth in his music. So much.

The lyrics, there are life lessons for me. I feel like it's like archeology. You're digging and then you find these little scrolls that say, "Feel more, think less." Or, "Be careful about running away. You need to know where you're going." Things like that. But I feel like everywhere, if you're digging, you're getting a life lesson. As much as I love the characters and I love all the complexities and the whole plots, I love SWEENEY TODD, I love--- I mean, all of that, for me, that's all facets of what makes it interesting, but I think so much, there are literally words to live by within there. I'm not say it's a religion, but sure could be. Like the sacred scrolls.

You've worked on a few of his shows, like SUNDAY and PASSION and, most recently, DO I HEAR A WALTZ?. Do you find having played those roles and working with him informs how you interpret his other music now?

Yes. He's a very kind person, he's a very detail-oriented person, and he never lets you feel totally good about yourself. It's like you're always striving. So there's both this warmth and then there's this kind of ruthlessness that's wonderful, that's unsettling. I think having experienced him, it only bounces off his work, back and forth in a pretty fruitful way, I think.

The more I've gotten to know him or the times I've worked with him or the roles I've played have only made me revere him more. It's not like sometimes you get closer to a mentor and they get less attractive as you get to know them. In this case, the more close I've ever been, the more I've admired him.

Do you have instances where you're interpreting something that you haven't worked with him on before and heard in your head the kind of notes he might give you?

No, I've not tried to imagine how he would critique things. If we have the time together, I've really taken in his critiques or some of his wonderful--- There's the, "I chose and my world was shaken / So what? / The choice may have been mistaken / The choosing was not." He said "What" and "Not" have to rhyme. Things like that, when it's like a weird rhyme, so you have to find, "So wot?" ---W-O-T--- "The choosing was not" so somehow it can feel like a rhyme.

Knowing that he said that to me once on the Opera House stage will make me look other places for interesting balances of a word, unusual rhyme, or unusual word relationships. In that way, one comment affects every time I touch his words. That's one definite example. He also says that you can sing words that aren't there. Like, if it's an apostrophe, he actually believes you can sing the apostrophe.

I'm always interested in Sondheim's women, his female characters. You wrote an op-ed in the Times last fall about whether you've aged out of the ingénue role and playing Leona in WALTZ, how kind of almost ageless she is and emotionally frozen. I find there's a lot of wiggle room with his characters in terms of age and interpretation, and I'm wondering if that draws you them, as well, that they're a little bit more malleable.

Well, hold on! I'm not sure I said I aged out. I said I think I might be awfully close to being arrested for continuing to don the petticoat. With your permission, or a few more directors, I'll leave a few ingénues still ripe for the taking.

I think Sondheim's women are so interesting to me and I don't think age is terribly limiting in shows like COMPANY or A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC and many others. I was approached already to play Mrs Lovett! I think what matters most for actresses who approach a role he has articulated is understanding ambivalence, regret and a plucky drive for survival, at any age.

Talking about the June 3 show, have you changed anything [from the version you did in DC] before coming to 54 Below? I know you're working on a lot of detail stuff and make sure you're extra prepared, but any alterations?

Yes, I have changed quite a lot. I was fresh off PASSION then and had not yet played Leona, where I was able to spend a bit more time with Mr. Sondheim. Even a little time with him affects me in radical ways; he is a wonderful teacher, even if he's a bit cryptic, quick and genius and not going to repeat himself many times while you catch up. I also feel that even in a few years, I have grown more attached to Sondheim music emotionally. I am comforted by him on a spiritual level, as the world around us grows more and more discordant and scary. I feel Sondheim has wisdom and healing in his work, and tremendous warmth. I have so much to learn. I'm hardly an expert.

Honestly, there are a few songs I don't think I can learn in time because there are too many lyrics to study. I want to add some songs but they are too dense. I think (deeply) learning two of his songs a year is about the right pace, unless you're in a show and have endless time and pressure. My choices were informed by that feeling that these 14 songs are the ones I can really feel right now as if for the first time. And every one I have chosen is my favorite one.

As far as interpreting Sondheim's music, how do you decide what to play with and what to just leave alone? Is there any anxiety there?

Musically, working with a few arrangers, I've taken a few songs and found what I would call a groove here and there. It's an intuition I have that maybe sometimes a song can be as much a dream or a trance as it is a dramatic song for a specific scene in a play. Other times, I feel the songs are too perfect as pure acts of theater. I'm not anxious. I'm just making music, respectfully and for fun.

You have a show at Birdland show coming on July 3, focusing on Hollywood & Broadway in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. I know it's another one of your favorite areas to perform. What draws you into that?

It's a fascinating thing to just look at the classics, the movies, and the first truly fabulous singing actors.

What has it been like collaborating with Michael Feinstein? What do you learn from him as a performer and cabaret artist?

He wants every show, even if it's Carnegie Hall where we did the Harry Warren show, to feel relaxed and happy and unstressed as it would in a living room. Intimate and personal and informal. He reminds me of Marvin Hamlisch. A truly great band leader, a tremendous entertainer, a historian and a ball of handsome charisma.

You had family in the Ziegfeld Follies. Does that draw you a bit to doing more intimate cabarets?

The Errico Ziegfeld connection draws me to a lot of things: a love of history, a love of glamour, and a respect for what it has been like for women through the decades who wanted to be artists and suffered more than it might seem. My own family is full of stories of how women were discouraged since the arts were no place for "decent women."

Between the two shows, you're going from Sondheim to 1930s/'40s/'50s Broadway and film. What are the differences and challenges of the two?

They both demand research and care. And they are both my idea of a good time! I guess the Sondheim show is more cerebral in a way and harder to memorize. It's also more modern psychologically, I guess you can say. The older songs are simpler, less layered, but there's something gorgeous about that, too. I like remembering the songs that influenced my own parents and my teachers. My pianist father loved Kern and Gershwin and American popular songs of the 1920s. He played ragtime at home.

ON YOUR TOES was the 1936 musical that inspired me to become an actress and created a love in me of jazz music and classical and Broadway all blended into one stage experience. The musical fusion of that show was the ultimate of exciting sound to me.

We're going to bring the same band that played for me and Michael Feinstein, so there will be beautiful swing, Latin, classic ballads... Elegance mixed with flirty fun. And a fabulous song that is in the mold of "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend," but not that song--- a hidden gem! I might very well wear satin opera gloves, okay?

How have both styles or areas shaped you as a performer?

I feel fortunate that a life in musical theater is a constant education. There is so much to learn and so many new parties to throw! Of course, the musical theater actress always wants first and foremost to be in a play, but the concert environment can be a fabulous way to stay in shape vocally and to be forced to create your own self-expression using the tools you love most. It's like being an author. You are faced with the blank page. A singer can make a musical night go anywhere, and that's just great practice at being creative. I've had many excellent directors and teachers, and I loved Mary Cleere Haran perhaps best of all. She directed me at Birdland many times, and this show will be in her loving memory.

Flexibility and openness are really the best values this career has drilled into me. Try not to get afraid of trying new or lots of different things. Sing what feels good. Let decisions be more intuitive. I remind myself that as I say it!

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Melissa Errico performs MELISSA ERRICO SINGS SONDHEIM at Feinstein's/54 Below on June 3, and November 17 and 18. For tickets and information, visit www.54below.com.

Ashley Steves is BroadwayWorld's Cabaret Editor and an arts and entertainment writer based in New York. Follow her on Twitter @NoThisIsAshley.