Melissa Errico
‘Broadway Baby — From Manhasset To Manhattan & Beyond’
54 Below
Through November 4

In Yiddish, there’s the concept of the patchkarie, (potch-ka-rye), which refers to another Yiddishism, mish mosh, a random mixture of stuff — or, as they sing in “Fiddler on the Roof,” “a little bit of this, a little bit of that.”  Melissa Errico, in describing her latest set at 54 Below, uses the Italian term bollito misto. The official definition is “a feast of mixed boiled meats,” but Ms. Errico uses it to mean a mix of almost everything that’s sweet and enjoyable. Still, unlike a patchkarie, the mixture is hardly random.

She starts with stories about her family, particularly her grandmother Rose, an Italian immigrant who became a Ziegfeld girl, dancing in the original production of “Show Boat” in 1927. Then there’s her father, who went to Yale on a music scholarship but wound up becoming a doctor and serving as a medic in Vietnam. 

His most rewarding performance at the keyboard, she tells us, was a version of “The Man I Love”  that so entranced a young co-ed at Catholic school that she summarily married him. Ms. Errico delivers it in such a sweet, heartwarming fashion that you have no doubt she’s thinking of all the men she’s loved before, from her father onward.

The show also touches on other aspects of her life and career: Stephen Sondheim, the 1998 Broadway version of “High Society,” and her long, multi-tiered collaboration with a larger-than-life French composer, Michel Legrand. 

She opens the evening with Legrand’s first major international hit, “Watch What Happens,” in an arrangement that’s jazzier than usual for this Broadway baby. Happily, she has the smarts to follow the rhythmic lead of her hard-swinging trio; the pianist and musical director, Tedd Firth, bassist David Finck, and drummer Mark McLean. Later in the show, she follows with an undulating, sensual reading of “Windmills of Your Mind,” set to an exotic beat.

Ms. Errico’s Sondheim bona fides are memorable turns in “Do I Hear a Waltz?,” “Sunday in the Park with George,” and “Passion,” as well as numerous solo all-Sondheim shows, revolving thus far around her 2018 album “​​Sondheim Sublime.” Also, she tells us a second Sondheim album is arriving in a few months.  At 54, she sings “Can That Boy Foxtrot,” which leads into Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz’s “Confession.” Both songs use multiple entendres, but Ms. Errico is such a superb storyteller that she brilliantly telegraphs the underlying meaning well before singing the punchlines. 

She also delivers  a flamenco-styled re-arrangement of “Take Me to the World,” prefaced by a lesson in clapping that seems very zen. The song comes from “Evening Primrose,” a 1966 made-for-TV musical that is essentially Sondheim’s visit to “The Twilight Zone.” Likewise, Mr. Firth’s arrangement of Cole Porter’s “It’s All Right With Me” — written for “Can-Can” but repurposed for “High Society” — got all salsa on us, with a clave beat and a keyboard quote from Bizet’s habanera. 

Ms. Errico originally set her sights on musical theater — a goal she achieved in playing leads in about half a dozen major Broadway productions. Over the years, though, she’s also leaned occasionally toward jazz, a direction that informs her one-woman shows with a remarkable aptitude for a delicious spontaneity. For each of her four shows at 54 this week, there’s a different guest star — Marilyn Maye and Charles Busch are joining her Friday and Saturday, respectively. 

On Thursday, she welcomed the estimable composer Stephen Schwartz — currently the man of the hour as “Wicked” reaches its 20th anniversary. He accompanied her on “Meadowlark,” perhaps Mr. Schwartz’s most keenly felt musical soliloquy, and then joined her on the “Wicked” anthem, “For Good.” She made a point to tell us that they hadn’t had the opportunity to rehearse beforehand — an announcement that was hardly necessary, as the two were so in step with each other, and so in tune with the moment, that they didn’t seem to be performing the songs or singing them, but actually living them.

That same sense of spontaneity carried over to two other guests, guitarist JC Mailliard and trumpeter Benny Bennack III, a  Birdland regular. The dreadlocked guitarist accompanied Ms. Errico on Joni Mitchell’s “Night Ride Home,” giving it a world jazz vibe, and the latter appeared on the more Sondheim “Broadway Baby,” shadowing her beat for beat, like Holmes after Moriarty. Along the way, there was a folk-jazz-showtune hybrid treatment of “I’ve Grown Accustomed to her Face,” reminiscent of the avant-Americana style of Bill Frisell.

After speaking lovingly and repeatedly of her three teenage daughters, Ms. Errico encored the set with Taylor Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down” — I confess I had never heard it before — a rendition that occupied the long stretch between sarcasm and sincerity. Then, Mr. Schwartz rejoined her on stage once more for the “Godspell” hymn “Day by Day.” She outlined it like a Baptist preacher leading the congregation, which also wasn’t necessary but was highly endearing. It told me something about the Broadway-informed crowds who frequent 54 Below: We were hip enough to know all the words but insisted on clapping on one and three.