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Broadway's Bernadette
The actor and singer who has won two Tony awards for her Broadway shows is at her best in concert backed by a 26-piece orchestra.
By JOHN FLEMING, Times Performing Arts Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published January 3, 2002
[ Publicity photo]
“I enjoy doing concerts a lot because there’s no fourth wall,” Bernadette Peters said. “It’s just me and the audience having a good time, hopefully, all in one place for the same thing, to be entertained.”
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Bernadette Peters grew up on the jazzy pop singers of the 1950s -- Frank Sinatra, of course, but also performers who are little remembered today. She loved song stylists like Frances Faye and Gogi Grant who put their own idiosyncratic stamp on standards by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Irving Berlin and the Gershwins.
Though Peters is best known as the consummate Broadway singer-actor, she has been emulating the torch singers of her youth for 25 years, giving concerts first in nightclubs and now in performing arts centers. She has engagements Friday at Ruth Eckerd Hall and Monday at Van Wezel Hall.
"I enjoy doing concerts a lot because there's no fourth wall," Peters said. "It's just me and the audience having a good time, hopefully, all in one place for the same thing, to be entertained."
Backed by a 26-piece orchestra, Peters largely focuses on songs by Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber and other theater composers, but she includes some unexpected covers such as J.D. Souther's Faithless Love. With this year being the centenary of the birth of Richard Rodgers, she'll be singing more Rodgers and Hammerstein and has a recording of their songs forthcoming on the Angel label.
"I'm doing an obscure one called I Haven't Got a Worry in the World, and then the ones that people know like Some Enchanted Evening, You'll Never Walk Alone and The Gentleman Is a Dope," she said. "As a kid I used to sing It Might As Well Be Spring, and I'm singing that one again, but I never really sang much Rodgers and Hammerstein. I thought it might be corny. But it isn't. There's so much truth in the material."
Peters, who turns 54 in February, grew up in New York. She started singing and dancing professionally as a child and was a member of Actors' Equity, the stage labor union, at 9. Her breakthrough came in the off-Broadway spoof Dames at Sea in 1968.
Youthful stardom was on her mind in the wake of the Britney Spears tour last month in Florida. Peters and her husband, investment adviser Michael Wittenberg, have a house on Miami Beach, where she was before Christmas, as well as residences in New York and Los Angeles.
"There's no place anymore for young people today to get the background I had," she said. "Britney Spears' career is much different than mine because it's on such a grand scale. It's more of a package, more like MTV. It's fine, and she's a lovely young woman, but I don't know what the longevity is. Rock and rollers from my day, like the Stones, were really good bands, and they sang. She probably can sing, but it's not what she needs to do because she can do a lot of lip-synching."
Two years ago, Peters won her second Tony Award for her performance as the sharpshooting heroine of Annie Get Your Gun. Her first was for 1985's Song and Dance, the Lloyd Webber show in which she played a free-spirited young Englishwoman in America.
Now she is slated to play Mama Rose in a much-anticipated revival of Gypsy, with an updated book by Arthur Laurents and directed by Sam Mendes, best known for his Oscar-winning film debut, American Beauty. Rehearsals are tentatively planned to begin a year from now in New York.
It was Laurents who asked her to consider playing Gypsy Rose Lee's stage mother of all stage mothers, the role created by Ethel Merman.
"Arthur said they wanted to do it again, but why do it with the same kind of character that's been done?" she said. "He said that Rose actually was 5-foot-2 and blond and looked like me."
Improbably, Peters has turned out to be the successor of Merman, who also originated the title role of Annie Get Your Gun. Nobody would ever mistake the Kewpie-doll Peters for Merman's brassy belter.
"Ethel was Ethel, and she played all the great roles," Peters said. "I never thought of playing Annie Oakley until I read the script and found this wonderful character that didn't need to be done Ethel Merman-like. Rose is a wonderful character also, so it's just a matter of looking at the script and finding myself in there."
There have been Gypsy revivals starring Angela Lansbury and Tyne Daley. Rosalind Russell starred in the 1962 movie. Bette Midler played Rose in a made-for-TV movie.
"Because it's so far away, I really can't tell you how I would do it," Peters said. "I have to find out what drives her. You have to get the music in your voice and learn how to sing it. It's a rough show because it's an emotional show. You have to learn how to do it so you can do eight shows a week."
Along with singing and dancing and acting, Peters is also celebrated for her mane of curly red hair. Now that she has a place in Florida, how does she keep it from getting frizzy in the humidity?
"You know the easiest thing? Finesse hair conditioner. Just leave some in and let your hair dry naturally. It works great."
Preview
Bernadette Peters gives a concert at 8 p.m. Friday at Ruth Eckerd Hall. Tickets: $50. (727) 791-7400. She performs at 8 p.m. Monday at Van Wezel Hall. Tickets: $50 and $55. 1-800-826-9303.
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