All tagged Bernadette Peters
Andrew Lloyd Webber and Don Black created a heartfelt, funny, touching and palpably heartbreaking musical when they wrote Tell Me On A Sunday. Written as a one-woman show for British actress-singer Marti Webb, Tell Me On A Sunday was presented at the Sydmonton Festival in 1979. Telling the story of an English woman who has just moved to the United States, the musical follows her as she navigates her new home (first NYC, then Los Angeles) and explores the possibilities of love and career, writing letters to her mother back in England detailing her experiences. This is the basic premise for the first act of a musical that would come to London’s West End in 1982 under the title Song & Dance.
Have you ever been at the TKTS Booth in New York City’s Duffy Square and looked up to see a statue looming over the area? Have you inspected said statue more closely and saw the name “George M. Cohan” etched across the front. I’m sure many of you know who Cohan was, but I am guessing there are a lot of people out there who do not.
With Bernadette Peters taking the stage as Dolly Gallagher Levi in the Broadway revival of Hello, Dolly!, I thought it would be fun and appropriate to create a compilation of some of Ms. Peter’s finest musical performances on stage, television, and the big screen. Just like the waiters at Harmonia Gardens are ecstatic to have Dolly return to her favorite haunt, we are beyond thrilled to have her back where she belongs in a Broadway musical. I hope you enjoy this tribute to one of Broadway’s finest leading ladies.
Broadway musicals and strong leading ladies walk hand in hand. Since the inception of the Broadway Musical, an actress who can command attention and generate box office revenue through her personality and talents is a sought after commodity. Somewhere along the way, the Broadway Musical Diva emerged and theatre fans became obsessed. I decided to examine each decade of musical theatre (starting with the 1920s) and weigh contributions, reviews, awards, career escalation, and the other je ne sais quois that make an actress unique and decipher who was the most-valuable player of that ten year span. Part of my rules for writing the piece was that no actress could appear on the list more than once, though many of these talented ladies’ careers span several decades. Read on and enjoy. I look forward to your comments and debates.
