31 Days of Holiday Cheers Exclusive: Melissa Errico sings a Sondheim Parody Medley with a holiday theme

Stage to page31 Days of Holiday Cheers Exclusive: Melissa Errico sings a Sondheim Parody Medley with a holiday theme

For the artist, Sondheim captured the dark essence of Christmas perfectly.

Every day this December comes Playbill in the spirit of the season with 31 Days of Holiday Cheer – which divides some of our favorite music videos from Broadway stars. Go in daily for classic songs and new songs about Christmas, Hanukkah and New Year. And we even have a surprise new, original Playbill videos to share.

For many people, Christmas and Sondheim ways do not go along. After all, the late Maestro never wrote a holiday singing in any of his shows. According to Tony-nominated actor Melissa ErricoThe composer was “a significant holiday grouch”. But it did not stop Errico, who holds the holidays and Sondheim with the same partner, from the combination of the two. Above, in a video provided exclusively to Playbill, she sings a Sondheim Parody Medley with a holiday theme.

Here she posts a Yuletide turn for some classic songs: “Send in the clowns” Word “Let us return it” (citing the defective gifts received at Christmas), and “Losing my mind” becomes a lament about the composition of toys and furniture for your children. So it is not as much holiday -cheers as holiday rans.

Errico was recently on the New York Theater stage in Dear liar at the Irish rep, where she is a regular player. She also releases a new Sondheim album called called Sondheim in the city, next year (offered with a series of promotional concerts).

Below Errico discusses how many significant holiday songs are written by Jewish writers and how she did it White Christmas on Broadway while caring for three toddlers.

Your holiday programs include storytelling about holiday songs, such as how Christmas songs are regularly written by Jewish songwriters. Would you be willing to share a taste of one of your stories here?
Melissa Errico: I think it is hilarious and pleasant that so many of the greatest Christmas songs – from ‘White Christmas’ to ‘Silver Bells’ to ‘The Christmas Song’ – were written by the great Jewish songwriters, of Irving Berlin to mel tormes. One of my favorite and unique things in my Christmas program is a new parody version, written for me, from ‘The Christmas Song’, with lyrics by the New Yorker writer Adam gopnikAnd dramatize that the song, like so many Christmas songs, was actually composed and included in the swelling heat wave of a Los Angeles summer! Did you know Robert Wells Was so hot and sweaty, he sat down in July 1945 and wrote down the opening lines, and he said, “To cool myself.”

I always add parodies and ‘specialty material to my holiday programs just to surprise. This year we did a special set of Christmas songs as if Stephen Sondheima notable holiday -grouch, it might have written. [Which you can watch inthe video above].

Holiday music seems to be heard on the radio earlier and earlier every year, and the abundance of holiday songs is endless. Why do you think holiday music has become such a tremendous genre that sounds with so many people?
I think it’s because the holidays – all of them, even if they have a religious basis (which I try to honor, I like Chanukah songs!) – is the once of the year when people are free to express their strongest emotions: love for family, a sense of the passage of time, the urge to keep faith with one another and with our ideals. In our busy lives, we may not have time to stop and take our emotions, but on the holidays we do. And what better thermometer of our hearts is there than music?

And it is also a time of ominous feelings … a time of longing, which is an emotion I would like to share with people, as in the beautiful, broken heartfelt Broadway song “Hard Candy Christmas.” This year’s holiday program was entitled “White Christmas & Other Colors” – an attempt to fill in the entire palette of Christmas feeling, all the many red and green and golden colors.

You have earned widespread praise as Betty Haynes in a Broadway revival of White Christmas! This show has such a long history. How does it live in that Christmas classic for a whole run, and are there any favorite memories of this show you want to share?
Well, it was an honor to appear in that show, and I loved the charming Christmas costumes (especially the famous fur-finished gown, known as ‘Big Red’) and the old-fashioned story and above all the Irving Berlin songs. Irving Berlin can sometimes look like the simplest of the great songwriters – but it is filled with emotion and meaning. “How deep is the ocean” and “blue sky” from that show became part of my standard set list. And Berlin’s “How Deep Is The Ocean” became the cradle song I sang for my three daughters.

If I of … the thing I remember most of the show is that I was care Three daughters, all under the age of three, if you can think, while I appeared on Broadway every night! My two-and-a-half-year-old daughter had a multiple Barbie dream house in my locker room so she could play while working. A joy but exhausting time!