Music
Bernadette Peters
I saw her in Annie first. Then Into the Woods. But it was her “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better” that got me.
She’s worked with Steve Martin. And Carol Burnett. And Mandy Patinkin.
She’s been a floozy. A would be starlet. A gunslinger. A witch.
And, for a while, I wanted to be just like her.
I don’t know how she caught my attention and I don’t really know why. But somehow, there she was, all flaming hair and huge talent.
And now, when I hear one of her songs, I stop to listen.
They’re good, the girls they play on the Broadway Channel. Creamy voiced or honey throated or booming tongued. Cinderellas or Cosettes or Elizas they are, pining over love lost or dreaming over new life begun.
They’re good. They’re beautiful. And when they start to warble, I warble right along.
But they aren’t her.
To me, she *is* Broadway.
And when she sings, she sings alone.