Known for her confessional lyrics and raspy, smoky vocals, Melissa Etheridge has lit up airwaves and arenas across the world for more than two decades with instant classics like “I’m the Only One,” “Come to My Window,” “I Want to Come Over”, and more. Now, the Grammy and Academy Award-winning rockstar arrives on Broadway with her acclaimed event, Melissa Etheridge: My Window, an intimate experience like never before, inviting theatergoers into an exhilarating evening of storytelling and music. From tales of her childhood in Kansas to her groundbreaking career highlights – with all of life’s hits and deep cuts between – Etheridge opens her heart and soul on stage to fearlessly dazzle audiences of all generations.
Etheridge says she knows her son would want her to live, and embrace life, and this is what she has tried to do. She ends the show with “Come to My Window,” encouraging her fans to sing along. They do. It’s a crowd-pleasing end to a show that resoundingly succeeds as a concert, rather than a piece of theater. As Etheridge sings in “Here I Am Again,” music is her lifeblood—both energy and salve. “The song,” she sings, “will never end.”
Perhaps there’s not a false word in that realization, but, reached, on stage at least, so soon on this lickety-split path of grief, there’s not much complexity or depth there either. Her recovery from unimaginable grief seems blessedly brief, and in real life we wish her for nothing less. That it doesn’t ring true on a dramatic stage is a problem, though. Melissa Etheridge: My Window is a performance built as much on candor as it is on musical talent, and until the big, rushed moment towards the end, Etheridge succeeds on both counts. One suspects its just too soon to deal with the latest tragedy, and Etheridge, her co-writer and her director just haven’t yet found a way to turn this ultimate heartache into art.
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