DIVA TALK: Catching Up with White Christmas' Melissa Errico

By Andrew Gans
November 27, 2009

News, views and reviews about the multi-talented women of the musical theatre and the concert/cabaret stage.

MELISSA ERRICO
Melissa Errico, who possesses one of the great sopranos in today's musical theatre, recently returned to the Broadway stage in the second annual New York run of the family-friendly holiday classic, Irving Berlin's White Christmas, which is based on the film of the same name and is playing the Marquis Theatre though Jan. 3, 2010. The limited run marks the first time that the singing actress, a Tony nominee for her work in the Michel Legrand musical Amour, has performed on The Great White Way since the birth of her three daughters: three-year-old Victoria and ten-month-old twins Diana and Juliette. Prior to rehearsals, Errico — whose Broadway credits also include My Fair Lady, High Society and Dracula as well as stellar turns in the City Center Encores! productions of Call Me Madam and One Touch of Venus — spoke about her return to the Broadway stage, motherhood, and a long-in-the-works solo recording spotlighting the songs of composer Legrand; that interview follows.

Question: How do you feel about returning to Broadway?
Melissa Errico: I'm on a cloud. This is unexpected. I'm happier than I can really say. I didn't expect this. I've been auditioning, and I've been singing since the babies were all born and through all the pregnancies. I've stayed in shape but, in all honesty, I didn't know when. It's like the Shel Silverstein [poem] "The Missing Piece." It's not quite the only missing piece. I felt I had other missing pieces… but the showbiz thing, I really missed that and wanted that in my life. In all of my happiness with the kids, I have really missed… not just the singing. I've sung. I miss being in a costume, I miss being in a story. It's really weird because now I'm older and you really have to ask yourself what matters in life. You would think maybe that plays would fall by the wayside at some point, but it's not gonna happen. It's not gonna fall by the wayside here.

Question: That's interesting. Why do you think that is?
Errico: I don't know. It's like a gene or something. It's the musical theatre gene. Haven't you heard of that? [Laughs.]

Question: Yes, I think I've got two of those. How did the role come about?
Errico: The old-fashioned way. The actual day was Wednesday about two weeks ago. I was at the hair parlor. I hadn't had my auburn locks colored in awhile. I just sort of accent my brown hair and make it a little more auburn brown. With the babies, I have zero time to take care of myself, so for a year I've been doing my color with $7.99 Clairol stuff from the drugstore. All summer I really did a number on myself because of the chlorine and the sun and hanging out with the kids. I was a total ragamuffin mom. So I finally make an appointment on a Wednesday. I'm sitting there, and the guy says it's gonna take three hours to fix this mess. Then I get an email that I have an audition tomorrow. I'm stuck with stuff on my hair, and I'm like, "I gotta get home!" And that night was my sister's engagement party. So I was literally gonna have no time to even print [the audition material] or read it.

	Melissa Errico
	photo by Joan Marcus

Question: You had to memorize something for the audition?
Errico: Yeah, I had to audition in the morning with Jay Binder. But I had to fix the hair though! [Laughs.] It's bad though, and it wouldn't do me any good to not solve that. So I'm sitting there, and I forward the information to [husband] Patrick [McEnroe], who is at the Tennis Center where he has an office. I say, "Do you have a printer?" He says, "No, but I'll get home early." So he goes home early to print it, so at least I have it. There's no time, so we go to the engagement party, and I have to do the whole thing with my sister. I love my sister, and I'm not gonna be like, "[I have] an audition tomorrow." I just have a good time with her, then I read the first act and I go to bed. The next day I get up really early with the twins at six. Victoria's gotta leave at 8:15 in order to get to school. She's three. I take her to her pre-school, and then I just sit hardcore at the pre-school working on the script. The head of the school comes up to me and says, "What are you doing? You have papers everywhere!" I don't have a good technique for discarding papers. I'll put them upside down on the couch. So I'm making this big mess. I said, "I'm trying to read the second act. In two hours I have an audition for a Broadway show. I'm still learning the story." Anyway, the whole school is coming to White Christmas. [Laughs.] It's a boring story, I know, but it's my life. It's a very ordinary problem. I've gotta get a three-year-old out the door every morning, then be a showgirl later. It's gonna be interesting.

Question: What songs do you get to do in the show?
Errico: I get to do "Count Your Blessings," "Love, You Didn't Do Right By Me," "Sisters," of course, which is so great because I have three girls. Every summer I do a tribute at Guild Hall to a composer. Last summer was Arlen, and the year before was Irving Berlin. So I've sung this whole score and gotten to know the family of Irving Berlin. They all came to Guild Hall. So "Sisters" is in my brain already. So when I'm giving birth to all these girls — not that I'm singing "Sisters" — but it's on my mind that they're gonna have to learn that song. I also sing "How Deep Is the Ocean" and that wonderful song "Falling Out of Love." And there's a hidden gem, which is the opening song, "Love and the Weather." It's a real swingy song. It's wonderful.

Question: Were you familiar with the movie?
Errico: No, that was the problem with getting the audition and having the stuff in my hair and the engagement party and all the kids in the morning and the pre-school! In auditions you don't know how much to push your life aside and say, "I've got a real chance with this one!" I've been going in for things. I don't want to sound totally "aw shucks," but I'm so happy. I'm so thrilled. All I did was just try to have my life and do my homework and give it as many minutes as I could. It happened so fast. I guess that's how it was for everyone. I auditioned Thursday, and I had two callbacks on Friday.

	James Clow with Melissa Errico
	photo by Joan Marcus

Question: You didn't know this movie, but were there other holiday movies that were a tradition growing up?
Errico: Well, Christmas itself — I'm a real Christmas girl. Now that I have the kids, it's even more. But I've always had a tree, always made a big deal out of decorating the house... I grew up in Manhasset — we believe in Santa. We'd actually leave cookies and a beer for Santa, and I never thought that was weird. [Laughs.] We always left him a beer! I do remember that my brother once asked for barbells, and I remember hearing out my window them being dropped and someone saying, "Shit!" [Laughs.] They used to hide [the presents] in the garage and then bring them in. I remember that sound when you drop barbells on cement in the suburbs. I just remember that sound as the breaking of the fantasy. I don't think my parents ever openly admitted that there's no Santa! [Laughs.] We're all approaching 40 and my parents are still like, "Well, there's no presents because he didn't come yet."

Question: How old are your girls now?
Errico: Nine-month-old twins and a three-year-old.

Question: What are your thoughts about going back to doing eight shows a week?
Errico: Well, look, the costume fits. Just! [Laughs.] The fitting was interesting. That famous red dress is tight. My feelings are it's amazing that I was so big this time last year with the twins. I was carrying twins, and I carried them full term. At this time last year, I couldn't walk. They weren't even born. They were born at Thanksgiving.

Question: What's it like giving birth to twins?
Errico: Weird. It's too much. Giving birth to one, I named her Victoria… I'm part of a mothers' group, where all we talk about is boobs and things you don't wanna know. [Laughs.] I'll try to remember who I'm talking to, because I can just go there. But it's such a tremendous feeling to have a child. It's so exciting, and it's just gratitude. You have no control. You don't know how it's going to go, you don't know who it is, you don't know what you're getting. You just feel so small. It's like when you're faced with something beautiful in nature, like if you look at the sky, and it's almost too much beauty. That's how you feel with children. There's too much beauty and, in my case, too much gratitude. Really, to get this show is too much. I don't know that I ever appreciated anything as much as I do these years.

Question: I know you've also been working on a new album.
Errico: Before Victoria was born I had the Michel Legrand record, which still exists. It's this incredible monster, this big orchestral CD. I got pregnant. I never felt I got the vocals right, and I never felt that Phil Ramone and all of the wonderful people involved really had me at my best. We just kept putting it down every now and then. And I did a lullabies record. Maybe it has something to do with baby booms or something, but Universal Records picked it up. So I put the Legrand thing aside and released that CD. And then a symphony booker started booking me all over the place, so I started touring with Marc Kudisch, Debbie Gravitte, Hugh Panaro, Ron Raines. I did all of these symphonies with Susan Egan… and these are world-class amazing concerts. We did the National Symphony, and we did the Royal Philharmonic in London with Angela Lansbury, Debbie Gravitte, Ron Raines — unbelievable. And that was the Jerry Herman one.

So I was doing those concerts and then Richard Jay-Alexander, who had cast me in Les Miz — he's still a friend, so from time to time when I'm at a crossroads or if something's not going well, sometimes we meet or sometimes I ask him his advice. I never would have thought he'd want to work with me on a concert. In the last five or ten years he's really taken off as the stars' guy. Now that we're working together he says, "Well, I would have done this years ago, but you never asked." I never would have dared. So this year I did ask. He was saying I could create my own concert, just to work on it and get an idea what it would be. Either a big fundraiser or something with other people, just to get an idea what the repertoire would be for myself. These symphony concerts are starting to ask me for my own charts. Michael Tilson Thomas hired me to be his only soloist. That was kind of a wakeup call. That was this Valentine's Day. I don't have my own charts, and I don't know how to do my own show. He was in a squeeze, and he went from a Valentine's concert with no singer to thinking, "I think I want a singer." I got the job, and I had never met him. I've been kind of fitting into a world where I'm singing "Think of Me" or West Side Story, a lot of My Fair Lady, all in the original keys. So the natural evolution of this is, as you get a reputation, people start asking you… "Let's have Melissa for Valentine's Day." I'm in front of a huge audience with one of the great conductors of our country, and I don't have a chart. After, that's when I did speak with Richard. That's kind of the catalyst. It's not like every conductor in the world is asking me, but we were a great success that night. It was one of my first concerts since the baby was born. It was in Miami, and I made a lot of jokes how it was my first night in a hotel room with my husband and no kids. It became like a running gag that I might get laid also as well as doing a great concert on Valentine's Day, so it became very saucy. Michael Tilson Thomas is very academic and wonderfully brilliant, and I just got really silly with him. It was good and it was enough for me to wonder, may I ever be given that chance again, I should probably use charts. Richard and I have been working on a concert all summer. I did text him while I was getting my hair colored. I said, "Look, I got an audition for White Christmas. What do you think?" He wrote back, "I like it." His support is really playing a role right now. It's a new chapter for me. I don't really know what's coming. I'm not the ingénue anymore. I'm older, I do have kids, but I don't want to walk away. I love this so much. I have to figure out some other things. Concert and singing will be other work.

Question: A lot of Broadway performers, it seems, do concert work — a really good way to keep doing your art when not in shows, which don't come along all that often.
Errico: You're right. You look at all the amazing stars who aren't, at the moment, working. The concerts and cabarets and stuff — that's a great place to tell stories and sing. So he and I are working. He is helping with the other producer, Phil Ramone, and we are doing the Michel Legrand record. I was in the studio all day yesterday.

Question: Is there a target date for the CD?
Errico: The target has changed. There are all these targets in life. Now the target is to make it really great. I don't know if it's family or just getting older, but targets change. I just want to do it right and well and be patient. I'm not really rushing for anything anymore.

Question: When you have three kids, I would imagine your priorities change.
Errico: There's no hurry. What's left is I still want to do it. I still want to be a part of things, and I'm interested to see that in myself. I get out there and I'm on these symphony stages or in an audition. I remember even at the interview, it has to feel like I'm at the right place. I don't want to feel uncomfortable or like I'm wanting something more than I have. That's not me anymore. I'm not sure if that's what I was like when I was younger, but I know that I really wanted to fit in and I really was excited. You know, when you're young, you really want to show you're competent. You really want to earn it. You push yourself really hard. I'll always be hard on myself and I'll always want to do a really good job, but my personal satisfaction is peacefulness and just wanting everyone around me to have fun and slow down. Maybe it's when you become a mother, you really just want people around you to be content more than you want it for yourself. I want the experience of contentment in my life. It's a shift in the way I think, and it really only can come with years and wisdom. Maybe, in my case, it comes with having my heart living outside myself. I really don't have a lot of time to sweat the small stuff.

Question: I think that comes with age. You realize what is worth getting aggravated over and what is not.
Errico: Show business is tough. If you buy into what you don't have and what you want and all that… Maybe because of the kids, I really put it beyond the backburner. I just put it aside. Your body goes through so much. It's so medical, and it's so profound. You can't really have babies and plan to get back into show business. At least I didn't do that. I went to babyland. I bought a ticket and didn't have a return. I really want to parent them. We'll see, in the big picture, how I'll manage. I'm glad I waited to be in my mid-thirties to start. I do take White Christmas as a lovely sign of encouragement that I can maybe have some of my artistic dreams filled.

[Irving Berlin's White Christmas plays the Marquis Theatre, 1535 Broadway. Tickets are available by calling Ticketmaster at (877) 250-2929 and (212) 307-4100 or by visiting www.ticketmaster.com. For more information visit www.whitechristmasbroadway.com.]

Well, that's all for now. Happy diva-watching! E-mail questions or comments to agans@playbill.com.