Review: Eric Michael Gillett 'STOPS THIS TRAIN' at The Laurie Beechman Theatre

Eric Michael Gillett seems to describe himself as a sort of enigma who's just come to New York by chance, and still isn't quite sure it's right for him. Well, after the last year he had, complete with home fires, surgeries, and off-stage accidents resulting in ER visits, he's still here, ain't he? As New Yorker as ever, it probably helps that the whim that first brought him here was Broadway (many of us can relate), and there's nowhere else in the world with anything close to being like it. Artists, dreamers, the entertainers of millions put on shows with endless variations and countless different meanings that appear and disappear faster than the light of blue star. And Gillett? Well, he's seen his fair share of audiences from underneath the lights, and deservedly so. There's a certain ring to a true Broadway caliber voice, and even if most modern theater requires less of one's vocal cords, it's clear that Gillett harkens back to an era that brought in the likes of Adam Pascal and Idina Menzel. Gillett's soul-searching tour returned him once again to that happy place that's touched many of us, the stage, and here he told the story of his career using witty retorts and of course, singing.

All of Gillett's performances were solid, though there are certainly a few that stood out. For example, an especially strong early number was "Walkaway Joe," which Gillett immediately followed with the title song of the evening, "Stop this Train." He didn't really dive into how these two particular songs related to him, and yet, through the way he sang, the emotion of the songs became self-explanatory. And as usual with this John Mayer classic, the question became: does the singer truly want to "Stop this train" or not. Gillett really landed the line, "I want to get off and go home again," but then later his voice settled in sweetly for the line, "Don't for a minute change the place you're in." In addition to his technical strengths, Gillett brought deeper feelings into his show, as it seemed, at some point, he really needed to talk out recent events (in his own life). While I'm sure some of the life changes he could have done without, he did showcase his adaptations to modern music, mixing the eras of his songs very well. You might expect someone who is 28 to combine songs written by Demi Lovato and Stephen Sondheim in the same show.

His two best songs of the evening were "Hades" a song by Sondheim from a musical that Gillett played in, and a mashup of "Waving through a Window" and "Answer Me." The lyrics of Hades were classic Sondheim, blending complicated verses with choruses reaching to crescendo. It was an ode to Hell written in almost an identical style to "Ladies Who Lunch." Sounds fun, doesn't it? Gillett certainly sang the song well and gave the song a little bit of flair too. It stood in contrast to the more mellow songs that Gillett emphasized, which included the latter mashup mentioned above. In this mashup, he artfully joined the lines, "before I leave with the worst of me" and "will you answer me?" to create an entirely new song experience where we felt for him pining after someone or something.

His pianist and the composer for a pair of his songs was Mike Pettry. Gillett also had innumerable smiles for his guests, and he was funny enough to deserve a gig as a stand up comic on any night in New York.