My Fair Melissa

“I used to be in paradise just being on Broadway,” says Melissa Errico. One might say that the love affair wasn’t completely mutual. While she has starred on the Main Stem in Anna Karenina, My Fair Lady, High Society, and Amour, the runs of those four shows added up to less than a year in total. (On the plus side, her performances earned Errico a Tony nomination for Best Actress along with three Drama Desk and three Outer Critics Circle nominations.)

Moreover, the role that might have brought Errico her greatest Broadway success — the lead in a revival of One Touch of Venus — never happened despite the rave reviews that greeted her performance in the City Center Encores! staged concert version of the show in 1996.

Ah, well. Errico, who turns 34 this month, has found great success elsewhere: in cabarets and concert halls, in television and film, and in regional theater (including Williamstown’s star-studded Threepenny Opera and the Kennedy Center production of Sunday in the Park with George). She has also triumphed Off-Broadway, notably in the Irish Rep’s productions of The Importance of Being Earnest and Major Barbara. And in the New Group’s recent production of Aunt Dan & Lemon, she earned critical praise for her turn as the unhappy mother of the precocious Lemon.

So it’s not surprising that Errico is psyched up for her upcoming back-to-back gigs: a three-week run of her new cabaret show Spring Fever in the Algonquin Hotel’s swanky Oak Room beginning March 16, immediately followed by a return to the Irish Rep in a concert staging of the 1947 musical Finian’s Rainbow. That show, which re-teams Errico with her Amour co-star Malcolm Gets, is scheduled to run April 6-May 30.

Spring Fever will vary significantly from Errico’s cabaret performances last year at Joe’s Pub, which were in support of her well-received CD Blue Like That. For one thing, she will be playing with a different group of musicians led by Clifford Carter, best known as James Taylor’s longtime keyboardist. “For this room, I didn’t want some pop-rock guy my own age,” Errico explains. “I wanted someone who can play harmony or feel comfortable doing a solo, and especially someone who loves jazz. I think I got that from Betty Buckley; I sang with her last year at Feinstein’s. I also want to bring the spirit of being a team player to my band, which is not something I would’ve said when I was younger. I’ve really learned to listen, to absorb the ideas of other people, even if I disagree with them.”

As for material, Errico is planning a mix of standards, modern theater music, and pop. “I grew up on musical standards and I still love them,” she says. “I am doing some really romantic theater music that I did for a Valentine’s Day concert but I’m also singing Van Morrison’s ‘The Way Young Lovers Do,’ which is really a jazz waltz with very poetic lyrics. I’m going to do something by Adam Guettel, whom I’ve always admired and who lives in my neighborhood. There’s also a new song by Lindy Robbins and Jeff Franzel, and a new song by my brother Mike.”

Despite having only a weekend’s break before tackling the lead role of Sharon in Finian’s Rainbow, Errico wouldn’t dream of passing up the opportunity. “It’s just the score I want to sing right now,” she enthuses. “I so love this show and this role. We did it as a one-night benefit and it was super-fun. Of course, I am interested in seeing in what we can do with the plot,” she says in reference to the now-controversial racial aspects of the show. “And, concert staging or not, I am not planning to wear black for six weeks! I’ve worked with [set and costume designer] Tony Walton twice before at Irish Rep, and I know he can create gorgeous universes there.”

Getting to work with Gets gain is an added bonus of the project: “Anything we can do together is great. I know Malcolm was deciding between doing this show and something more serious, and he told me he chose this because he wanted to make people laugh. I feel the same way.” As for the unusually heavy workload that Errico has taken on this year, she has no complaints. “I think of all the months I spent in L.A. last year, waiting around and doing nothing,” she says. “And most of the people who work in this country don’t get to take much vacation, so why I should be any different?”

Errico also has a very understanding husband in tennis pro Patrick McEnroe. (Yep, John McEnroe is her brother-in-law.) “No one knows better than Patrick what it’s like to be on tour, to be on a constant daily grind,” she tells me. “But the good thing is that when he’s home, like now, he’s really around. We get to eat breakfast together, read the paper. It’s a beautiful marriage. Of course, I know he’d like to steal me away to an island for a week, but that’s not going to happen right now. However, he’s been named captain of the U.S. Olympic tennis team, so I’m really hoping I can go to Greece with him this summer. We were there last fall, after the Davis Cup. We just made a last-minute trip; we had no reservations or anything, but we managed. And now, Greece is like Mecca to me.”

When she returns, Errico could find herself back on Broadway — depending on the fate of Frank Wildhorn’s Dracula. The musical has been a contender for a couple of seasons now but Errico thinks all the elements may finally be in place: “We just did another workshop of it recently — me, Tom Hewitt, Len Cariou, and Lauren Kennedy — and I think it’s looking really good. My parents came to the workshop and they really liked the score. I think it’s fantastic, and Des McAnuff is such a wonderful director. I was offered the show the first time he did it, back at the La Jolla Playhouse [in fall 2001] but I didn’t do it. Now, I know what I missed!”