
Marking the centennial of The Great Gatsby, The Fitzgeralds: A Reading with Music revisits the lives behind one of the most enduring works of American literature.
At the heart of this performance lies the extraordinary correspondence between F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald — letters that reveal a relationship shaped by ambition, artistry, and emotional complexity. Through their own words, we encounter two singular voices whose love and conflict fueled some of the most iconic writing of the 20th century.
Directed by Stephen Hamilton, this reading features acclaimed performers Melissa Errico and Alec Baldwin, with an original live score by composer/performer, Forrest Gray, that brings new resonance to the Fitzgeralds’ words. Poised between literature and performance, memory and music, The Fitzgeralds is a reflective tribute to the people behind the prose.
Originally Devised by Steve Lawson
Directed by Stephen Hamilton
Readers Melissa Errico and Alec Baldwin
Original Score Forrest Gray
Performed by Forrest Gray
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Alec Baldwin
Since 1980, Alec Baldwin has appeared in numerous productions on stage, in films and on television. He received a Tony nomination (A Streetcar Named Desire, 1992) an Oscar nomination (The Cooler, 2004) and has won three Emmy awards, three Golden Globes and seven consecutive Screen Actors Guild Awards for Best Actor in a Comedy Series for his role on NBC-TV's 30 Rock, making him the actor with the most SAG Awards of all time. His films include MIAMI BLUES, THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, MALICE, THE EDGE, IT'S COMPLICATED, BLUE JASMINE, STILL ALICE, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: ROGUE NATION, and THE BOSS BABY among many others.
Baldwin earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 1994 and has received honorary doctorates from NYU (2010) and the Manhattan School of Music (2012). He has served on numerous boards related to the arts, the environment and public policy including the Hamptons International Film Festival, Bay Street Theater, The Actors Studio, Guild Hall of East Hampton, and the Roundabout Theatre Company. He currently serves on the board of People For the American Way and the New York Philharmonic.
He has authored three books: A PROMISE TO OURSELVES, his memoir entitled NEVERTHELESS and, with Kurt Andersen, the Donald Trump parody YOU CAN’T SPELL AMERICA WITHOUT ME. He is the host of a podcast, HERE’S THE THING, for iHeartRadio.
Baldwin is married to author and wellness expert Hilaria Thomas Baldwin. They have seven children: Carmen, Rafael, Leonardo, Romeo, Eduardo, Lucia, and Ilaria, as well as his eldest, Ireland Baldwin. Hilaria and Alec oversee The Hilaria and Alec Baldwin Foundation, which focuses on funding the arts.
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Melissa Errico
Tony Award-nominated Broadway superstar, recording artist and author Melissa Errico has been praised by The New York Times as “one of Sondheim’s deepest-hearted yet lightest-touch interpreters” while The Wall Street Journal called her 2018 album, Sondheim Sublime, “The best all-Sondheim album ever recorded.” Her new album SONDHEIM IN THE CITY, is Melissa’s kaleidoscopic vision of Sondheim’s songs of urban life, which Gramophone magazine said, “takes the musical theatre compilation album to a new level.” A street fair of New York scenes and moments, it summons back to life the poetic vision of a man who once confessed that his entire creative life had been spent in a twenty-block radius of Manhattan. From the wide-eyed newly-wed for whom a basement room with a quarter-inch view is all that she needs, to the cynical nouveau from New Rochelle who can’t choose between uptown and downtown for her bitter pleasures, Melissa celebrates and embodies New York characters, and their follies, of all kinds – with a clear arc of passage along the way. From innocence (“What More Do I Need?” and “Another Hundred People”) passing into experience (“The Little Things You Do Together”, “Everybody Says Don’t”) and arriving at the plaintive, bittersweet ambivalence that is Sondheim’s tonic note on “Good Thing Going” and “Sorry-Grateful” and the deeply emotional, and redemptive “Being Alive”, Melissa sings Sondheim as no one else can. She will also bring SONDHEIM IN THE CITY – IN CONCERT to London this summer, playing for one night only at The Cadogan Hall on Saturday, July 12.
She is known for her starring roles on Broadway, including My Fair Lady, High Society, Anna Karenina, White Christmas, Dracula, Les Misérables, and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress in Michel Legrand’s Amour. She worked with Stephen Sondheim on productions of Sunday In The Park With George (Dot) at The Kennedy Center, John Doyle’s hit New York production of Passion (Clara) and Do I Hear a Waltz? (Leona) at City Center. She played the Baker’s Wife in a concert run of Into The Woods. For PBS television, she sang “Finishing The Hat” on Poetry In America, and included much Sondheim on her own TV special. Melissa also has a long association with the French composer Michel Legrand with whom she made a symphonic album: she wrote his eulogy for The New York Times, and was the only American to sing at his memorial at the Grand Rex in Paris.
Much praised for her recordings, she has received still more praise for her concerts, where she can add her own signature smart talk and sensual style to her sublime singing, offering a presence so impassioned that it led Opera News to call her “the Maria Callas of the American musical theatre”. Her concert life takes her from symphony halls with orchestras -- from New York’s Carnegie Hall to, most recently, Texas and British Columbia-- to intimate nightclubs, including regular residences at the Bal Blomet in Paris and Crazy Coqs in London.
Her work in recent years has also taken her into the new territory of jazz song, particularly in her Noir album, Out of The Dark: The Film Noir Project (Warner Music Group), which Broadway World called “an exploration into the world of darkness, passion, and mystery -- a triumph of love that puts on full display the reasons why Melissa is one of the great musical interpreters of our time.” Reviewing her Montreal Jazz Festival concert with George Benson and his band in 2023, a writer from London Jazz News added that: “Errico was energized, making sure with every breath that she would get the audience in the 3000-seater Pelletier really on her side. Every high note was heroically held, and she got a standing ovation from this audience.”
Melissa has starred in many non-musical roles, especially in plays by Shaw and Oscar Wilde, including Dear Liar off-Broadway in the spring of 2023, playing Mrs. Patrick Campbell, George Bernard Shaw’s original Eliza Doolittle. She has appeared in films; and television with guest arcs on Cinemax’s “The Knick” and Showtime’s “Billions.” An accomplished author, she writes regularly for The New York Times in her column, “Scenes from An Acting Life”. Of Stephen Sondheim, Melissa has said “he is a musical north star,” and refers to his wisdom and inspiration as “life-saving, sheer joy, giving us all creative courage.”
“Sondheim in The City,” Melissa Errico’s tribute to Sondheim’s urbanity, feels like a New York house tour of thrill and heartbreak…You can almost hear the martini glasses clink—and shatter.” – The New York Times
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Stephen Hamilton
NYC: Angry Young Man by Ben Woolf at Urban Stages (American Premiere), The Furies by Neil LaBute, 59 E.59th Street
Regional: Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire at Bay Street Theater, Martin McDonogh's The Pillowman at LTV Studios. Arthur Miller's All My Sons with Alec Baldwin and Laurie Metcalf at the John Drew Theatre in East Hampton, NY. Gross Points, by Ira Lewis with Alec Baldwin at Bay Street Theatre (World Premiere), Ben Woolf’s Angry Young Man at the John Drew Theatre. (American Premiere). Also at the John Drew: ‘ART’, The Night Alive, Uncle Vanya, The Cripple of Inishmaan, RED. The Dirty Talkat The Clubhouse.
Opera: Acis and Galatea at the Catskill Mountain Foundation.
In 1991, Steve co-founded Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, NY with Emma Walton Hamilton, and Sybil Christopher. In his seventeen years as Executive Director of BST, Hamilton oversaw over 50 productions including Jon Robin Baitz’ adaptation of Hedda Gabler (Tony nomination, Kate Burton), Sandy Wilson’s The Boy Friend (Julie Andrews’ directorial debut and National Tour). Other new plays under his tenure included work from Paula Vogel, Lanford Wilson, Cynthia Ozick, Terrence McNally, Marsha Norman, Chris Durang, and Rick Dresser featuring performances by Cherry Jones, Alan Alda, Diane Weist, Richard Dreyfus, Mercedes Ruehl, and Twiggy.
Steve and his wife, author/educator Emma Walton Hamilton, live in Sag Harbor. They have two children, Sam and Hope. http://stevehamiltoncoaching.com/
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Forrest Gray
Forrest Gray gained recognition for scoring And Everything Is Going Fine, a documentary by Steven Soderbergh about his father, Spalding Gray. Gray has gone on to build a diverse career in film scoring, with credits ranging from his arranging work for singer-songwriter Mike Posner to composing podcast themes for Tina Brown and Hillary Clinton. He’s contributed additional music to projects like Netflix’s Dear White People, Bridgerton, Raising Dion, The Curse of Bridge Hollow, CBS’s East New York, and Marvel’s Secret Invasion.
Under composer Carter Burwell, Gray has contributed additional music for The Morning Show, Space Force, To Catch A Killer (2023), and Finestkind (2023). His work on The Morning Show also led to songwriting for Apple TV+’s Pretzel and the Puppies.
In 2023, he completed the score for Barber, an Irish Neo-noir starring Aidan Gillan (Game of Thrones, The Wire) which premiered at number ten at the Irish box office, followed by its US release in September, 2023. He has two soundtracks slated for release this year, including one for Stone Garden, a period-fantasy short shot on the Disney Volume Stage.
Sponsors
Performing Arts programs are supported in part by funding from Galia Meiri-Stawski and Axel Stawski, Henry and Peggy Schleiff, The Melville Straus Family Endowment, Monica and Peter Tessler, and Vital Projects Fund. Music Programming is supported in part by The Ellen and James S. Marcus Endowment for Musical Programming.
Additional support provided by Friends of the Theater: Natascia Ayers and Jim Ciquera, Bonnie and Joel Bergstein, Christine and Bill Campbell, John and Joan D’Addario, Gabrielle and Gianpaolo de Felice, Debbie and Henry Druker, Lena Kaplan, Hilarie and Mitchell Morgan, Steve Pesner, in memory of his wife, Michèle Pesner, The Schaffner Family Foundation, Lisa Schultz and Ezriel Kornel, Jayne Baron Sherman and Deborah Zum, Stacey and Oliver Stanton, Leila Straus, Susi and Peter Wunsch, and Andrew Yuder and Kyle Glaeser.