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‘Melissa Etheridge: My Window’ Review: Musings on Life and Music

On Broadway, this rock concert spliced with memoir has gained a striking intimacy.

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A woman playing a guitar onstage is wearing black pants and a black blazer over a black top in a scene from “Melissa Etheridge, My Window.”

By Laura Collins-Hughes

In 1979, when Melissa Etheridge was an aspiring rock star getting ready to leave Leavenworth, Kan., for music school in Boston, she got a 12-string guitar. Her father made a macramé strap for it — a sturdy, intricate piece of knot work that was a portable souvenir of his love.

“And this is it,” his Grammy Award-winning daughter said during her Broadway show, turning around to give everyone a view of the strap that held up her instrument.

It was a charming moment, and in our high-definition, multi-screen world, refreshingly analog: just Etheridge, life-size and in three dimensions, sharing the room with us.

Share it she does, superbly, in “ Melissa Etheridge: My Window ,” which opened Thursday at Circle in the Square Theater, just one block east of where an earlier version of the show ran Off Broadway last fall. On Broadway, this rock concert spliced with memoir has gained a striking intimacy, as if Etheridge had shrunk an arena to fit in the palm of her hand.

A stage stretches across one end of the space, floor seats and a center aisle are where the theater’s thrust stage would usually be, and a tiny satellite stage sits behind them. Circle in the Square never struck me as a warm, embracing theater, but Etheridge makes it one, paying graceful, diligent attention to every section of the 726-seat audience, and occasionally coming down off the stage to sing and stroll.

Written by Etheridge with her wife, Linda Wallem Etheridge, and directed once again by Amy Tinkham, this musically gorgeous, narratively bumpy show starts with Etheridge’s hit “Like the Way I Do,” ends with “Come to My Window” and fits 15 husky-voiced songs in between, including a trippily comical “Twisted Off to Paradise,” an arrestingly beautiful “Talking to My Angel” and a winking ode to her current gig, “On Broadway.” (Sound design is by Shannon Slaton.)

On a set by Bruce Rodgers whose spareness serves the complexity of Olivia Sebesky’s projections, this is a visually slick production, with abundant jewel tones in Abigail Rosen Holmes’s saturated rock-show lighting, and Etheridge looking glamorous in costumes by Andrea Lauer.

The show is shorter, more polished and more assured than it was Off Broadway — though Etheridge still seems undefended when she doesn’t have a guitar strapped across her or a piano in front of her. She also doesn’t speak memorized lines but rather tells versions of stories mapped out in the script. It’s a valid approach that sometimes leaves her fumbling for words.

Kate Owens plays the small, clowning role of the Roadie, a character whom the audience loves but who I wish would desist from upstaging Etheridge with antics.

Etheridge herself is very funny, and she knows how to handle a crowd. Such as when she got to the point in her life story when she fell for a woman who was married to a movie star — “a for real, for real movie star,” she added, for emphasis.

“Who?” a voice called out, not that the performance is meant to be interactive.

“Look it up,” Etheridge said, shrugging it off.

Unlike her recently published memoir “Talking to My Angels,” which opens with a recollection of “a heroic dose of cannabis” that changed her understanding of herself and the universe, “My Window” proceeds chronologically, starting with Etheridge’s birth. (Projections show baby Missy with fabulous hair.) So the talk of what Etheridge calls “plant medicine” comes later.

This is a passion of hers, so it belongs in a show about her. But the performance devolves into speechifying every time it comes up, except when it morphs into an enactment of experiencing an altered state — which, despite some vividly kinetic projections, can be as tiresome to watch onstage as it would be off.

Surprisingly, the most starkly powerful part of the show Off Broadway — Etheridge recounting the death of her son Beckett, at age 21, in 2020 — works less well on Broadway.

I cannot fault Etheridge for her stiffness in that delicate section at the performance I saw, or for reaching for words — like her blunt assessment, “He was difficult” — to convey her memories. But this is where relying on the script’s gentler, more contextual language could assuage what must be a terrible vulnerability.

Logistics also undercut that scene. While Etheridge speaks from the large stage and the auditorium is plunged in darkness, a guitar is placed on the satellite stage by a technician who crosses in front of many people. No distraction should break the connection between Etheridge and her audience in that moment.

She is, throughout “My Window,” a marvel with that audience.

Back when her fame was rising, she told us in Act II, she started playing arenas and stadiums.

“Thousands and thousands of people,” she said, “and the funny thing is, the more people there were, the further away y’all got.”

On Broadway, they’re near enough again for her to commune with. And so she does.

Melissa Etheridge: My Window Through Nov. 19 at Circle in the Square Theater, Manhattan; melissaetheridge.com . Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes.

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‘Melissa Etheridge: My Window’ Review: A Broadway Memoir, Confession and Concert That’s Worthy of Applause

By Trish Deitch

Trish Deitch

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Before Melissa Etheridge became a stadium rock star, she spent four years playing lesbian bars in and around LA. That atmosphere—a small, rowdy roomful of happy drunken ladies—changed the way she wrote music and performed. Etheridge loved the intimacy of those late nights—being up close and personal with an audience—and it’s clear from her new show, “Melissa Etheridge: My Window,” that she became expert at whipping up and working a crowd.

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You don’t know this, though, during the first act, which is a raucous, funny, and fun show that follows two main tales: the first of a young girl whose love of music was an undeniable force that had her playing Oklahoma clubs every weekend at 13 and 14. The second tale is about young Etheridge’s burgeoning realization that she’s a lesbian in a world that finds such truths aberrant. She’s so open about it and has such fun telling this part of her story—about her various dates over the decades, including with her first wife when that woman was still married to Lou Diamond Phillips—that at least one older Broadway theatergoer left the show, mid first-act, loudly grumbling his way up the aisle.

But the rest of the audience of mostly young women laps up Etheridge’s joy at being gay, and rocks out when she plays her hits written during this time, diving to catch the guitar picks that the rocker regularly tosses into the audience.

Speaking of which, the second act is more problematic than the first, not just when Etheridge gets to the part in her story where she’s now become famous, and fame takes a toll on her marriage. It’s a darker story, and Etheridge rushes through some of it and flubs some lines—suddenly you can see the artifice behind what otherwise appears like a seamless, improvised nightclub act.

As Etheridge talks about wild parties she and her wife threw at their house in the Hollywood Hills, and remembers weeks away from home on tour, you can almost feel her ego grow and her compassion for her wife wane. The audience’s laughter becomes strained. One hopes that over the course of the show’s limited run, Etheridge, with the help of director Amy Tinkham, will be able to transform what seems like un-self-aware bitterness into something softer and smarter or more evolved.

Meanwhile, though, she throws into this mix a sudden fascination with hallucinogens like mescalin and ayahuasca. The stories of her trips are overwrought in the way that such tales about mid-life spiritual awakenings sometimes can be. But at the end of the day, this beloved rock star found God using mind-altering substances, and so when she tells the story of her son’s death, you almost believe she’s found a way to understand it, and situate her boy in an ongoing benevolent universe.

The bottom line is that Etheridge is a superstar who on this Broadway stage gives her audience the genuine gift of spending two-and-half hours with her up close, as if it were the old days and she were playing Girl Bar in LA in the ‘90s or the Cubbyhole in the aughts. It’s a brave and unusually intimate offering, worthy of applause.

Circle in the Square, 795 seats, $179.50 top. Opened Sept. 28, 2023. Reviewed Sept. 27. Running time: 2 HOURS, 30 MIN.

Production: A Michael Cohl and EMC Presents presentation, in association with Larry Mestel, Steven Greener and Deb Klein for Primary Wave Music, of a play in two acts written by Melissa Etheridge with Linda Wallem Etheridge.
Crew: Directed by Amy Tinkham. Sets, Bruce Rodgers; projections, Olivia Sebesky; lights, Abigail Rosen Holmes; costumes, Andrea Lauer; sound, Shannon Slaton; production stage manager, McBee. Executive producer, Glenn Orsher.
Cast: Melissa Etheridge.

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‘Melissa Etheridge: My Window’ Broadway Review: A Rocker’s Life In Hits, With Some Misses

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'Melissa Etheridge: My Window' on Broadway

There’s no question that Melissa Etheridge is an inviting performer, whether she’s beckoning through her window or simply asking us to enjoy some of the great rock singing ever – and, yes, at 62 she is still a great rock singer, her raspy voice as rangy, powerful and, when she wants, as subtle as it was during her 1990s breakthrough days.

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Written by Etheridge with wife and Nurse Jackie co-creator Linda Wallem Etheridge, and directed by Amy Tinkham, My Window is, as the title suggests, a look inside Etheridge’s life, or perhaps lives, as in both personal and professional, young and old, happy and sad. Clearly inspired by Bruce Springsteen’s 2017 Springsteen on Broadway, Etheridge intersperses autobiographical tales though the many songs, memories both happy and bittersweet and, in a couple cases, devastating.

Etheridge, her co-writer and her director, don’t copy Springsteen and his director Thom Zimny exactly, expecially when it came to such dramaturgical details as pacing and weight, crucial decisions like what memory to let breathe and linger, and which nightmare to unleash full force for dramatic impact.

Don’t misunderstand: Most of My Window is as delightful as Etheridge herself. A born performer – she’s been at this as long as she can remember, and began earning a small living at age 12 singing in the bars, honky tonks and occasionally prisons within driving distance of her hometown of Leavenworth, Kansas. Her beloved and understanding dad drove her, uncomplaining, to every gig, sitting without so much as a sip at the bars while “Missy” honed her craft. Mom, not so understanding and a more complaining type, stayed home and sulked. And drank.

The show’s first half is especially charming, with its projections of family photos, old house facades and the occasional appearances (via “Roadie” Kate Owens, who plays any number of small, mostly silent roles – a French waiter, a drunken fan) of real-life mementos from Etheridge’s life (the tennis racket that doubled as a make-believe guitar, the real childhood guitar, the macrame guitar strap so lovingly crafted by her father, her first talent show participation trophy, her first Grammy, her Oscar).

Though she lacks Springsteen’s propensity for working stiff poetry – no complaints here about that – Etheridge’s funny, straightforward, sometimes stumbling recounting of her lifetime’s highlights might, in less personable hands, come off as Wikipedia recitation – and, truth be told, sometimes it still does. But Etheridge, enhanced by a truly fantastic and gorgeous light and projection design (Abigail Rosen Holmes on the former, Olivia Sebesky the latter), sheds any semblance of a Ted Talker by sheer affability. She great company for the nearly three hours, never gushy, pulling no, or few, punches (she names no names when talking about famous friends and lovers, but provides enough clues to anyone interested in Googling; in fact, she encourages it. Like I said, she’s fun).

In discussing the failed marriage to a woman she merely calls “The Movie Star’s Wife” (MSW was married to a star when the Etheridge affair began – i’ll save you the finger work: Julie Cypher, wife of Lou Diamond Phillips), Etheridge walks us through what Joni Mitchell might call those early “so much sweetness in the dark” days before starting to show the strain seeping in. The Movie Star’s Wife wants kids, though Etheridge suspects MSW needs to fill a void where her feelings for Etheridge should be. In any case, just before breaking up (“You lose ’em how you get ’em,” a shoulder-shrugging Etheridge quips) the couple has two children, a daughter and a son.

If you’ve followed Etheridge’s recent life, the mention of a son will chill. But more on that in Act II.

Perhaps it’s the fact that rise-to-fame tales are always so much more interesting that found-famep-at-last denouements, but the anecdotes in the first half of My Window – the troubled home life, the mother’s cruel, homophobic disowning of her daughter, the life-on-the-bum teen and college years, and, more than anything else, her flowering – really, there’s no other word for it – as a young lesbian dazzled by the then-seedy L.A. bars for gay women, refuges where young Missy found her people, found her musical spotlight and her voice and her performance style and, when Island Records’ Chris Blackwell walked through the tavern door, her future.

Etheridge’s evocation of those lost seedy L.A. days and the “Just Kids” aura are moving and powerful and full of forward momentum, a trajectory that can’t help but lose some dramatic steam when, with Act II, Etheridge finds the fame and fortune she’d always wanted. There are more romances – “she moved in,” Etheridge repeatedly jokes. “That’s what we do.” – and a rock star’s experimentation with woo-woo lifestyles, and then the litany of tragedies that we all face with age and, if we’re lucky, accept with as much grace as Etheridge does. The death by cancer of her beloved father hits particularly hard (her mother? Melissa mentions only that the dementia eased the anger she’d carried throughout her life).

“When I returned and tried to explain that everything is love,” she says after one trip or another, “I realized that this was something you cannot teach. It can only be learned.” (An editor’s note to people with cancer: Listen to you doctors. Please.)

Even if your tolerance for such rather pat hippie pronouncements is low, Etheridge, her fine musical performances, light shows that dazzle and, above all, a performer’s charming, unstudied stage approach will see you through.

At least until the second act’s inevitable clash with unspeakable tragedy. Knowing that Etheridge’s first-born son dies of a fentanyl overdose at age 21 in 2020 doesn’t quite prepare you for the moment on stage when, for the first time in the show, those swirling, trippy lights fade and Etheridge stands, barely lit by the faintest of spots, and says, out of nowhere, “The morning of my son’s death, I was watching my email for one from the Movie Star’s Wife. The only thing we still shared was the worry for our son. It had been four tense days of not hearing from him. We had sent the police to do a welfare check.”

The first email from her ex finally comes, saying simply, “He’s dead.” The second follows quickly: “I blame you.”

The harsh cruelty of that missive takes us by surprise – until now, even Etheridge’s rockier marriage moments have been free of such vitriol. And Etheridge’s shortcomings as a mother have been written off as standard, stretched-too-thin parenting. Certainly those words from an ex-wife about the death of a son they shared – “I blame you” – would prompt some excoriating self-analysis, or at least some on-stage dark-night-of-the-soul dramatics.

And perhaps they did in real life – we can’t know – but on stage, Etheridge devotes less time to this existence-shaking moment than to the many hallucinogenic trips she takes.

Of her boy, she offers, “My son had been swallowed up by this addiction. I kept feeling all this guilt & shame. Had I done enough? As I went deep into this darkness/ despair I just kept feeling one thing – ‘My son would want me to be happy.’ I was reaching for for my happiness, reaching anything that would lift me up. The one thing that lifted me up was knowing my son would want me to be happy. All is Love.”

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.

Title: Melissa Etheridge: My Window Venue: Broadway’s Circle in the Square Director: Amy Tinkham Written By: Melissa Etheridge with Linda Wallem Etheridge Cast: Melissa Etheridge, Kate Owens Running time: 2 hr 30 min (including intermission)

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Melissa Etheridge is giving fans a piece of her heart on Broadway

Her concert-style solo show, ‘Melissa Etheridge: My Window,’ marks its official opening at Circle in the Square

NEW YORK — Why is this night with Melissa Etheridge different from all other singing-celebrity confessional nights on Broadway? The difference isn’t in the story, really. It’s the storyteller.

And Etheridge is an accomplished one. She’s blessed with an easy audience rapport and a smoky, Janis Joplin-caliber warble — qualities that made the 62-year-old rocker a star and contribute to “Melissa Etheridge: My Window” being an engaging adventure. As always in a concert-adjacent solo show, it helps to be a fan. And Etheridge’s army is out in force at Circle in the Square, where the production marked its official opening Thursday night.

Seventeen songs fill the evening, which in the orthodoxy of the form has Kansas-born Etheridge narrating her rise from singer in the early-bird slot in Midwestern restaurants to performing before thousands in stadiums. She also shares a lot about coming out as a lesbian in 1993, at an inaugural ball for President Bill Clinton, and the ups and downs of relationships that produced four children and no small amount of romantic heartache.

She talks candidly, too, about the 2021 death of her 21-year-old son Beckett as a result of an opioid addiction, including his use of fentanyl.

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Little of her narrative — written with TV producer-writer Linda Wallem Etheridge, whom she married in 2014 — has not been elucidated before in interviews. What remains fresh is her music and her relish in singing it. Roaming Bruce Rodgers’s set, framed by a screen projecting Olivia Sebesky’s elaborate images and graphics, Etheridge invests full-throated passion in versions of “Juliet,” “I Want to Come Over,” “Open Your Mind” and most exhilaratingly, “Nowhere to Go,” the last song from her 1995 album, “ Your Little Secret .” (The lighting by Abigail Rosen Holmes offers intimations of rock concert panache.)

“If you know my songs — very dramatic,” Etheridge says of her musical catalogue, performed here without backup. A virtue of “Melissa Etheridge: My Window” is the degree to which the drama contains the story of a truly self-made artist. With the help of Kate Owens, who plays the practical role of roadie, switching out the singer’s guitars and doing little bits of second-banana shtick, Etheridge gives a sort of primer on discipline and will power. These qualities this rocker possesses in abundance.

It took her years of grinding out a marginal career, trying out for — and impressing — owners of small clubs here and there, before hitting real pay dirt. She name-checks Chris Blackwell of Island Records for having come to one of her sets and quickly deciding to produce her work. The moment sounds as if it was well-earned.

Understandably, Etheridge wants to trumpet all she’s earned, but does she really need to tell us she’s won Grammys and an Oscar (for “I Need to Wake Up” from the 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”)? Owens trots out replicas of the awards and places them onstage, little self-congratulatory bits that do not enhance the performance.

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The production is a lot more charming when it sidesteps ego and Etheridge just lets loose. Sprinkled in among her own songs, she includes “On Broadway” by Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil and Leiber and Stoller, and Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart.” I liked it especially when she came off the stage and wandered the audience, singing to enraptured theatergoers.

At one point, she noticed a woman in a front-row seat in big clunky boots, resembling the pair she herself was wearing. Etheridge knelt down, slung the woman’s leg onto her shoulder and serenaded her. It was indeed very dramatic, in the exuberant way only a rock star in sync with her crowd could pull off.

Melissa Etheridge: My Window , by Melissa Etheridge, with Linda Wallem Etheridge. Directed by Amy Tinkham. Sets, Bruce Rodgers; projection, Olivia Sebesky; lighting, Abigail Rosen Holmes; costumes, Andrea Lauer, sound, Shannon Slaton. About 2½ hours. At Circle in the Square, 235 W. 50th St., New York. melissaetheridge.com.

New York Theater

by Jonathan Mandell

Melissa Etheridge: My Window Review

Melissa Etheridge was so young when she started playing the guitar that her fingers bled, but she kept at it, which seems a fitting start for her rocky road to rock star.

On her 17th birthday, Melissa Etheridge had a sleepover with a friend she calls only The Colonel’s Daughter, during which she had “a long deep passionate kiss full of teenage desire” – her first.

Her career as a rock star and her life as a lesbian form the two main poles that hold up the musical memoir by Melissa Etheridge, the husky voiced singer and confessional songwriter who joined her first professional band as a guitarist at the age of 12 in her hometown of Leavenworth, Kansas. Now, exactly fifty years later, she is appearing as herself on Broadway, with tales to tell, and, guitar in hand, some two dozen songs to sing, mostly her own, but also, aptly, “On Broadway.” (See songlist below)

Written with her wife of nine years, Linda Wallem Etheridge, who is an experienced TV writer and showrunner, “Melissa Etheridge: My Window” moves chronologically from her birth (we see baby pictures!), offering some undeniably memorable moments, whether funny, touching, triumphant, charming, or sad:

How her father, a high school teacher, took her to the bars and clubs where she had her first gigs because she was a minor, and made a macrame strap for her guitar.

How, after her mother rejected her for her homosexuality, a local pastor told her: ““Some folks in this chapel might disagree with me, but I do not believe that God would create a love that was wrong.” How, after record executives rejected her for five long years as she played clubs in L.A., one finally gave her contract saying: “I believe the future of rock and roll has a female face.”

The show tries to integrate the songs with the incidents from her life, indirectly and often effectively. When she visits a lesbian bar in Boston during her brief tenure as a student at Berklee School of Music, she launches into “Juliet” with the lyrics:

“They want to know They want to know Juliet, where’s your Romeo?”

“Open Your Mind,” with its suggestively psychedelic wailing and electric guitar licks, is woven into her description of her spiritual awakening after consuming some cannabis brownies.

For all the effort at integrating the stories with the songs, ultimately, “Melissa Etheridge: My Window” is best appreciated as a relatively intimate concert by a rock star who still has it thirty-five years after she first made it big. The music, in other words, likely works better than the memoir for most theatergoers who aren’t already the singer’s loyal fans.

There is a granular level of detail about Etheridge’s music career, starting from the age of three when she heard “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” on a transistor radio, and going club by club, album by album; we even learn the specific make and model of some of her favorite guitars. Her recollections are augmented by projection designer Olivia Sebesky’s slides, making the show feel close at times to a home movie. At the same time, though, she is vague about the women she has loved and lost, none of whom are named, several of them given nicknames that hardly sound complimentary: Granola Hippy Chick, the Movie Star’s Wife, A Girl From Indiana – and she tells us even less about the four children she had with a couple of them.

This withholding is unlikely to bother her fans, who probably already know the details, and can chalk this vagueness up to discretion.

But it was difficult for me to ignore several moments in the show that suggested evidence of some unreconciled anger, and a disturbing tendency to show little interest in anybody besides herself. All we learn about her mother is her indifference to Melissa; her older sister fares even worse. Melissa tells us the sister resented her being born on the same date, depriving her of a birthday party, and “our relationship never got better after that.” The resentment seems to go in both directions, Melissa delivering what felt like a couple of gratuitous potshots about how her sister wound up. Only her father is shown in a positive light, and his life is presented almost entirely in terms of how lovingly he treated her. We learn of some tragedies in her life, most terribly the death of her son Beckett, at the age of 21, connected to an opioid addiction. But we were told nothing of his life, other than his birth, before the moment when she tells us of his death.

She spends much more time with us detailing her pursuit of fame. When she wins a Grammy and then again when she wins an Oscar, the “roadie” (Kate Owens) comes out with the trophy, and shoots a little cannon of confetti over it. When Etheridge tells us she hit the big time — her “Yes I Am” selling over 6 million records, shortly after (coincidentally or not) she came out publicly at the first ever gay Inaugural ball, held by newly elected President Bill Clinton — the roadie helps her put on a Fame jacket. “There it was,” Etheridge exclaims. “There was the fame I was looking for. I was on the cover of magazines. This was it. FAME”

She implies it was a hollow experience, and she turned to spirituality instead, helped by the tragedies in her life, and also the drugs she took.

I don’t feel I have a right to judge anybody’s life, even somebody who is depicting it for me on stage. This is doubly so because I doubt the full measure of Melissa Etheridge is revealed in the monologues in-between the music of “Melissa Etheridge: My Window.” In any case, it is the music that most matters, and, at 62, Melisssa Etheridge still rocks.

Melissa Etheridge: My Window Circle in the Square through November 19, 2023 Running time: Two hours and 30 minutes, including one intermission Tickets: $115 to $219. Digital rush ( Telecharge Lottery and Rush ): $44.50 Written by Melissa Etheridge with Linda Wallem Etheridge Directed by Amy Tinkham Scenic design by Bruce Rodgers, projection design by Olivia Sebesky, lighting design by Abigail Rosen Holmes, costume design by Andrea Lauer, sound design by Shannon Slaton Cast: Melissa Etheridge, and Kate Owens as The Roadie

Like The Way I Do

Ready to Love Juliet Twisted Off to Paradise Nowhere to Go On Broadway Meet Me in the Back Bring Me Some Water

I Want to Come Over Talking To My Angel I’m The Only One Open Your Mind Piece of My Heart This War Is Over Here Comes The Pain Here I Am Again Come to My Window

Author: New York Theater

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'Melissa Etheridge: My Window' review — a celebration of the singer's truest self

Read our review of My Window , Grammy Award winner Melissa Etheridge's theatrical concert, playing at the Circle in the Square Theatre through November 19.

Melissa Etheridge is a Grammy- and Oscar-winning, globally successful rock star who, thanks to a folksy heartland sound and gritty, gravelly voice that sets her apart from her rock peers, still has the vibe of a hidden-gem indie artist. It's a contradiction she seems to be aware of and one that makes her theatrical concert, Melissa Etheridge: My Window , work.

No indie small-timer, of course, would get a two-month solo stint in a Broadway theatre to essentially narrate their Wikipedia biography and sing songs they assume many ticketholders will know the words to. But unlike Bruce Springsteen 's 2017 Broadway concert (which inspired Etheridge's) at the cavernous St. James Theatre , Etheridge's gets the Circle in the Square , which is closer to a Brooklyn music hall than an arena. The singer even walks among the audience while flawlessly shredding on the guitar.

The venue admittedly does most of the heavy lifting in bringing audiences closer to Etheridge than ever before. Much of the information she shares about herself in the show's 2.5 hours — her upbringing in Kansas, lesbian-bar-singer-to-star arc, interest in alternative medicine, romantic relationships, personal tragedies — is readily available online. And in her attempt to hit all the major points in her 62 years of life, she and director Amy Tinkham speed through much of it. But fans will nonetheless enjoy hearing Etheridge's story from her own lips, and when she slows down and lets us — and herself — live in a moment and feel a feeling for a little while, My Window is completely riveting.

Etheridge's memory of her first kiss is a highlight — with a fellow church girl with "eyes of green with a brown streak like rust." It's an innocent and tender excavation, not just a remembrance, of her wide-eyed teenage self. It's one of many romantic dalliances she recalls during My Window , which grow increasingly punchier, cheekier, and increasingly captivating if only because an older lesbian professing her truth and sexuality on stage is still something so rare. Another contradiction, considering that Etheridge reminds us her coming out in 1993 didn't derail her career — a statement that almost proves surprising (and educational) in 2023.

Her segments on the benefits of drugs and alternative medicine are, though also not rushed, less effective, as she takes a preachy rather than introspective tone. But luckily, no matter how overlong any bit of narration gets, Etheridge's next song saves the day.

From her best-known hits to the first song she ever wrote as a kid, each one soars, their poetic lyrics supplying the emotional depth the script sometimes misses. As a casual Etheridge fan, I left wanting to listen to each song over again and discover the rest, though the exhilarating experience of hearing her pour her desperation into "I'm the Only One," her fiery desire into "I Wanna Come Over," and the full extent of her nimble guitar mastery into "Bring Me Some Water" live is something the recordings can't replicate. Those can only provide a window into the experience.

Melissa Etheridge: My Window is at the Circle in the Square Theatre through November 19. Get Melissa Etheridge: My Window tickets on New York Theatre Guide.

Photo credit: Melissa Etheridge in My Window. (Photo by Jenny Anderson)

Originally published on Sep 29, 2023 01:00

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Review - Melissa Etheridge @ the Marin County Fair (7/4/23)

A huge crowd turned out at Marin Civic Center Park for Melissa Etheridge’s Fourth of July concert at the Marin County Fair and she delivered early fireworks with a hits-filled 90-minute set and banter that connected with the area and the occasion.

Tuesday brought a crystal-clear day in San Rafael where temperatures managed to remain reasonable despite the well-publicized heat wave that hit most of the area. By the time Etheridge took the stage promptly at the 7:30 start time, temperatures were in the lower 70’s. 'We might have the most perfect weather in the whole world right here, right now,' Etheridge told the huge crowd after delivering an energetic opener of “All-American Girl.” The crowd not only filled the traditional jumbo performance tent on the lagoon’s island and standing room space, but also spilled out to be more than a dozen deep around a secondary viewing screen and multiple people deep around the entire lagoon.

Sticking to the hits after expressing gratitude and joy for the day’s location, timing and crowd, she launched her tight band into “If I Wanted To.” “Royal Station 4/16” – a bit more obscure number that she referred to as 'our train song.' As she struggled with her hat trying to put a harmonica on, she joked with the crowd, “I swear we are professionals” and then demonstrated those professional chops with excellent harmonica and guitar solos.

“I want to come over” sent the crowd to their feet with dancing in the aisles and some of the younger attendees jumping high into the air. As the sun began to set and the midway’s lights began to take affect, she introduced “All the Way to Heaven” by saying 'This song is about keeping true to your goals, but remembering it’s the time getting to them that’s the fun part.' The song – pulled especially for the night featured the highly relevant lyrics:

Etheridge shared that she’s doing a one woman show in New York City on Broadway that will run from September to December, called My Window . She then sang an extremely playful cover of George Benson’s “On Broadway” with a heavy, funky wah applied to her guitar. “Must Be Crazy for Me” was an appropriate follow-up with a heavy R & B vibe where Etheridge provide an opportunity to solo for each of her supporting band (bassist Joe Ayoub of the American Idol House Band, drummer Eric Gardner and keyboardist/guitarist Max Hart). Etheridge led a singalong that started loud, went down to a whisper and then roared to a bombastic crescendo supported by her tight band.

Etheridge engaged in a long 12-string guitar intro into “Chrome Plated Heart” as dusk took full effect. She showed the same high level of facial audience engagement she has always maintained (my first Etheridge show was at the Santa Barbara County Bowl in 1990). She shot sly side glances, wide open smiles with an occasional mugging for the crowd thrown in to keep a loose feel to the very tight musical precision. She has aways been someone who gives love to her audience and seems to lean deeply into the love the audiences return to her.

By this point in the 90-minute set, we had reached the closing drive of big hits and Etheridge delivered four whoppers. “Come to My Window” was introduced with a sparse solo 12-string guitar that allowed it to sneak up on the audience. Once recognized, the audience again jumped to their feet en masse – never to return to their seats. The audience all sang along and much like so many Tom Petty live songs, everyone seemed to sing the lead along with Etheridge. A rousing “Bring Me Some Water” followed as probably Etheridge’s highest paced, hardest rocker of the night.

Before going into “I’m the Only One”, Etheridge told the crowd that she hoped everyone 'ate some weird food and was bringing something unique home that is of no use.' She implored the crowd to 'Spread the peace and choose only love' and then led one of her biggest hits to a huge ending to rapturous applause that echoed and reverberated around the lagoon. She and the band then returned to deliver “Like The Way I Do” with a slow acoustic guitar intro building to the song’s explosiveness and setting a sonic precursor for the fireworks to follow shortly thereafter.

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Melissa Etheridge Setlist Marin County Fair, Summer Tour 2023

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I have been to my share of concerts at Red Butte Gardens. Something about this one hit different. On its face, it was a sold-out Red Butte Gardens Outdoor Concert Series show , packed wall-to-wall with the standard Pendleton blankets, Tommy Bahama low-back chairs and Yeti coolers, but the audience hadn’t turned up for a concert—they’d turned up for a sabbath. They were here to gorge their souls on the fiery words and rock and roll of two women who are unapologetically themselves and double-dare others to be the same—Elle King and Melissa Etheridge.

Before I get too into the concert, I feel I must address a crime committed against Melissa Etheridge. One that I almost predicted. At Monday night’s concert, as I stood in awe of Etheridge absolutely shredding on a 12-string guitar, I remarked to my partner that it was obscene how many “best of” music lists on which she’d been left off. Now, as of Wednesday, we can add one more to the pile.

Rolling Stone was already sashaying into tricky territory by trying to narrow down “ The 50 Most Inspirational LGBTQ Songs of All Time ,” but when they left off Etheridge’s “Come To My Window,” even Etheridge took note, tweeting out, “Dear Rolling Stone …was it something I said?”

Dear @RollingStone …was it something I said? “I don’t care what they think I don’t care what they say What do they know about this love anyway?” https://t.co/y4jq1KVPaT — Melissa Etheridge (@metheridge) June 28, 2023

Etheridge released “Come To My Window” in 1993, on her Yes I Am album, around the same time she came out publicly as a lesbian. The song, with its potent imagery and palpable yearning, earned Etheridge the Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance and it still deserves all of the play it gets today. “I don’t care what they think / I don’t care what they say / What do they know about this love anyway?” Is still as resonant a line for people seeking non-hetero relationships as it was 30 years ago.

Elle King, Red Butte Gardens, June `26, 2023

Elle King kicked off the night with the announcement to the audience that she had just bought new jeans in Salt Lake City. A point she later followed up on by posing to the audience, “I know what you’re thinking—she may have got some new jeans today but has she acclimated? No.” And went right into the song, “I’m Not Drunk, I’m Just Drinking.” In the middle of which, she quipped, “When you factor in the altitude, that first drink is sinking in.”

That exchange exemplifies King’s casual and loose style, warming up the crowd with that and well-known jams like “Ex’s & Oh’s,” coming right out of “Chain Smokin, Hard Drinkin, Woman.” After a cover, she told the crowd, “That deserves a shot because you sat through that,” a pun off of the next song: “Worth A Shot,” a new song from her 2023 album Come Get Your Wife. The songs from the album take a more country swing from King’s previous, rock-centered studio albums, Love Stuff (2015) and Shake the Spirit (2018). King herself seems to be leaning more that way, judging by the countrified version of “America’s Sweetheart” (originally a boot-stomping rock anthem off Love Stuff ) that she performed at Red Butte.

King’s set wasn’t all fast and loose, taking a more thoughtful turn as the sun started to set. She performed another song off of her new album, “Lucky,” which is the sort of reflective, aching-but-ultimately-triumphant retrospective that we expect from musical artists after performing for more than a decade. “Now that we’re in our emotions, let’s stay there,” King said, following that up with another new song, “Love Go By,” a soulful track from Come Get Your Wife.

King was back to her raucous, irreverent self by the end of the set, performing her new album’s lead single “Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home)”, recorded as a duet with country artist Miranda Lambert, for the encore. Red Butte Gardens was a stop on the tour of Elle King’s new album, Come Get Your Wife .

Melissa Etheridge, Red Butte Gardens, June 26, 2023

Melissa Etheridge is all rock and roll—all black hat, leather pants and jacket. She plays lead guitar on her songs—alternating between six and 12-string guitars seamlessly—while still absolutely wailing. At 62-years-old, it’s possible her expressive voice has only gotten more raw and powerful with time. She opened her set with “Your Little Secret,” the title track off of her 1995 album.

Etheridge covered “On Broadway,” a wink to the fact that her theatrical memoir of Etheridge’s life will be staged on Broadway later this fall. Etheridge says the song is also a throwback to the days she used to “play lounges and dream.”

She hit some of the most moving and driven of her songs from the late 80s and throughout the 90s. About halfway through the set, during “Crazy For Me,” all of the members of the band ripped out some old-school rock solos, something that punctuated almost every song in the set—a masterclass in rock and blues guitar. During the encore, “Like The Way I Do,” not only did Etheridge lead the song on her 12-string, but take a turn on the drums (she pulled out the harmonica throughout the night, too).

At one point, she implored the audience, “Be strong, speak true, choose peace and only love.” The words could be a motto for Etheridge’s repertoire of raw emotion—sometimes gut-wrenching, sometimes explosive, sometimes wry but always real.

Melissa Etheridge set list:

“Your Little Secret,” Your Little Secret (1995)
“No Souvenirs,” Brave and Crazy (1989)
“Royal Station 4/16,” Brave and Crazy (1989)
“I Want to Come Over,” Your Little Secret (1995)
“On Broadway” (originally by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller)
“Crazy For Me,” Never Enough (1992)
“Born Under A Bad Sign,” Memphis Rock and Soul (2016) (originally by Albert King)
“Chrome Plated Heart,” Melissa Etheridge (1998)
“Come To My Window,” Yes I Am (1993)
“Bring me Some Water,” Melissa Etheridge (1998)
“I’m The Only One,” Melissa Etheridge (1998)
“Like The Way I Do,” Melissa Etheridge (1998)

Melissa Etheridge: My Window

Closed: November 19, 2023

Review: Pass the Psilocybin and Come Over to Melissa Etheridge’s New Broadway Concert

Etheridge performs an intimate evening at the Circle in the Square Theatre.

2 Melissa Etheridge My Window 146 (c) Jenny Anderson

The more fame you achieve as a singer, Melissa Etheridge says, the farther the audience gets. In concert halls and stadiums, there’s a vast distance between performer and spectator — certainly, in the nosebleed seats on the upper deck, but even the front row could feel like a mile away. So, the opportunity to see Etheridge up close, personal, and shredding her guitar strings right in your face at Broadway’s Circle in the Square Theatre is a rare one, and one that should be taken.

Etheridge premiered My Window , her musical biography, last year at New World Stages. It felt like a great party then , and it feels like an even more intimate one now. Part of it is the venue change: though comparable in size and subterranean nature, New World might as well be MetLife Stadium compared to Circle in the Square, where the only thing separating the singer-songwriter from the adoring throngs is air. And you can feel Etheridge’s joy radiating through every single moment.

Written by Etheridge and her wife, Linda Wallem (creator of Nurse Jackie ), My Window follows a standard “person leaves small town hoping for fame” narrative. She tells us about her childhood in Kansas, her discovery of music, her eventual success as a generation-defining queer singer/songwriter, her relationships, her breast cancer diagnosis, and how plant-based therapies (read: pot and magic mushrooms) helped her discover the secret to happiness.

To Etheridge and Wallem’s credit, they’ve done an admirable job of clarifying the structure and editing the show down to a length that feels manageable, if still too long. It’s not Angels in America -sized anymore, but clocking in at around two hour and 45-minutes (including a 15-minute break and 10-minute delayed start), it’s only five minutes shorter than Wicked next door.

4 Melissa Etheridge My Window 257 (c) Jenny Anderson

Which would be fine if Etheridge provided us with the gory details, instead of speaking in generalities. If you’re jonesing for a kiss and tell, you’re out of luck — when an audience member unexpectedly screamed out “Who!?” as Etheridge alluded to her first partner’s “movie star ex-husband,” Etheridge ad-libbed with a mildly perturbed “Look it up” (to save you the trouble, Julie Cypher and Lou Diamond Phillips). Of course, this information is all public record; Etheridge even named names in her 2001 memoir. We know who her “lesbian talk show host friend” is, and which “former Vice President” made An Inconvenient Truth , the global warming documentary that earned Etheridge an Oscar for her song “I Need to Wake Up.” Realistically, does she even need to provide the particulars at this point? Probably not. But the intentional obfuscation amid the banalities doesn’t justify the running time.

Etheridge is not afraid to go there, as she proves in the final section of the show, where she discusses her 21-year-old son’s fatal fentanyl overdose three years ago. Lighting designer Abigail Rosen Holmes plunges the theater into total darkness (a stark shift from the trippy concert lighting that came before), and Etheridge dispenses with the platitudes to speak directly from the heart about her loss. This is the kind of emotional rawness that would elevate My Window into Springsteen on Broadway territory, but alas, she only gives us a taste. It’s also the only spoken section that she delivers without faltering, the rest of her dialogue plagued by “ums” and other filler words, as if she doesn’t quite remember the script (it was the same off-Broadway, so it must be an artistic choice, albeit a weird one).

Director Amy Tinkham largely stays out of her way, though the quality of the production itself is impressively beefed up for Broadway. Andrea Lauer’s costumes are more sparkly, Olivia Sebesky’s projections have more specificity, and set designer Bruce Rodgers tricks out the space with a secondary stage in the middle of the room that allows for Etheridge to move around. Best of all is Shannon Slaton’s crystal-clear sound design. Not only do we get every single lyric, but it often sounds like Etheridge is being backed by a thousand other players, when it’s just her own virtuosity.

And that’s what we’re really coming for. Etheridge’s fans don’t care about anything that I’m taking issue with; they want to hear “I Want to Come Over” and “Come to My Window,” and they’d listen to her play all night long. Count me in: Etheridge is a performer who radiates joy and masterful technique. The only thing more impressive than her musicianship (and she plays at least six different guitars over the course of the night) is how strong her voice sounds at 62 years old. Melissa Etheridge has been a rock star for pretty much her whole adult life, and she still has all the grit and rawness of her earliest records. It is a genuine treat to see her on Broadway and spend all that time in her presence.

6 Kate Owens and Melissa Etheridge (c) Jenny Anderson

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