Fans piled into the Cat in the Cream on Wednesday evening for an intimate performance by Eleri Ward, a New York City-based actress and songwriter who has built a career out of her unique interpretations of musical theater.
Ward, who prides herself on creating an alternative space within the musical theater genre, performed her acoustic covers of some of Stephen Sondheim’s greatest hits. Sondheim, one of musical theater’s most influential composers, had listened to Ward’s adaptations of his music and expressed his appreciation of them to Rick Pappas, his lawyer and executor of his estate, prior to his passing. In what Ward described as validating and “the most amazing moment,” Pappas told her in 2022 that “Sondheim loved your album and loved that you were doing something he never imagined with his music and bringing it to new audiences.”
Armed with a stool, a mic, and her guitar, Ward opened her 50-minute concert with her most famous cover, “Johanna (Reprise),” which she said often feels like an appropriate opening song, as it was the catalyst that opened up her career. The ballad from Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street involves four characters in its original form. Ward sings all four parts, seamlessly combining them to create a different narrative than what Sondheim had written, while simultaneously respecting the source material.
Ward then performed a rendition of “Send In The Clowns,” a solo from A Little Night Music and one of Sondheim’s most introspective songs. After she sang the last note, Ward revealed that this concert was the first time in over a year that she was performing these covers, as she has been busy creating original songs and starring in a widely acclaimed production of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic American novel The Great Gatsby. Over the summer, Ward took on the character of Jordan Baker in the American Repertory Theatre’s Gatsby: An American Myth in Boston.
After a cover of “Pretty Women” from Sweeney Todd, Ward asked the crowd of around 50 people if anyone’s favorite Sondheim musical was Into the Woods, to which many people responded with shouts and hands shooting up. Ward performed a “wild ride” of a mashup of six songs from the hit musical, including “Children Will Listen,” “Agony,” “Stay With Me,” “Giants in the Sky,” “I Know Things Now,” and “No One Is Alone.”
Ward rounded out her Sondheim set with a cover of “Sunday” from Sunday in the Park with George. After mentioning to the crowd on multiple occasions how important it is for her as a person and an artist to always be staying in the moment, Ward shared a moment earlier in her career, when someone was asked to describe what their perfect park is. They responded that their perfect park is putting on a production, singing a song, and reveling in the performance. Ward has since adopted that mindset, and told the crowd, “I would like for this moment to be my perfect park, sharing this present moment with all of you.”
Ward showcased her raw vocal ability in her original music, which features breathtaking runs in her upper register. Ward describes some of these songs as “ethereal pop music,” which comes across even without production. The way each song is composed, combined with Ward’s seemingly effortless clarity, produces a celestial sound that is challenging to convey in an acoustic set.
Ward’s first original song she performed, “Stepping Through,” is currently unreleased, but will likely be part of Ward’s first album of original music that she is actively working on. “Stepping Through” is about leaving old versions of ourselves and old narratives we used to live in behind us.
“By the end of this song, you will have moved through it, you will no longer be your old self,” Ward said to the crowd. “This song acts as a portal to get you to the other side and live the narrative you want to live.”
“Float,” a single Ward released in February, followed “Stepping Through.” Ward’s vocal chops were on full display during “Float,” which features crystalline high notes and impressive runs across Ward’s register.
Ward described the other unreleased song she played, which she didn’t give a name for, as “a song for little Eleri.” While all of Ward’s songwriting is creative and emotional, this song gutted the audience, with lyrics like “Here I am a woman crying, wondering why I am not moving / He’s the reason, he’s the ending / But now it was you, it was always, always you.”
Ward finished off her set with her most recently released single, “Venusian Light,” as well as “Moss,” the song that she said remains most true to herself.
“[I have to] be centered, be true to myself, and that is where my center lives; and that’s in the moss,” Ward said.
