ManicDDaily

Bernadette Peters With Egg Cream

I really like Bernadette Peters.  She is all the things a musical performer should be–supremely professional and uniquely graceful with a vast range (not just of the vocal but of the dramatic).   But I realized recently that my affection for her was based on more than all that.  There is also a certain warmth by association, the kind of personal, Proustian aura that may incite much fandom.

It started with her wonderful performance in Annie Get Your Gun on Broadway years ago.  My children and I went to the show because we had a friend in the cast.   He very kindly arranged for us to meet Peters backstage.  She seemed then (and now) just about the prettiest person I’d ever seen, like a creamy bouquet of purplish pink flowers.  My younger daughter especially was entranced.

But my affection for Ms. Peters really sparked the second time we saw that show (my daughter was extremely entranced).  We went with another set of friends, also with children.  I was feeling a little guilty.  Seeing the show twice was a huge extravagance–I had recently separated from my husband and had moved back from Brooklyn into Manhattan to be near my children’s private school–all factors which made money extremely short.

As a result,  I was happy that we settled on HoJo’s, a place that seemed both affordable, but had real seats, for the post-Broadway snack.

Oh HoJo’s!–I hadn’t been there for years and had almost forgotten the HoJo mojo–that wonderful creamsicle orange, swimming pool turquoise, giddy scent of fried clams!   (Oh childhood!   Oh tartar sauce!  Oh New Jersey turnpike!)

The father of the other family, Alan, was the only male in the group so he tended to fill a rather large spot in our table’s center stage.  A friendly, wise-cracking and rather short guy (otherwise completely unlike Bernadette Peters), he ordered a chocolate egg cream, which, when it was brought to the table, had one small crisp french fry floating below the foam–at  first  a source of mystery (was it a bug?) then amusement, as was the egg cream itself.  It all just seemed so New York.

Which brought me to the bemoaning of our new apartment.   It had been the best I could afford, but had turned out to have several significant drawbacks–features which I felt I should have noticed before I signed the lease.

Ah, but there was a learning curve in assessing urban real estate, Alan said.  On renting his first apartment, for example, he had not noticed that there was only one electrical outlet–in the whole apartment–which was located in the bathroom ceiling as part of the bulb light fixture.

He recounted the next several months, hooking up a full-size fridge to the light socket, unplugging it to shave  (with electric razor), reaching in (once he squeezed into the bathtub) for the occasional cold beer.

Whenever he rented an apartment after that, he said, he was very careful to check for electrical outlets.

With a rueful grin, he ordered another egg cream, asking the waitress to hold the fries…errrr… fry.

We could not stop laughing.  Alan had great delivery, but there was something more –the reflected brilliance of Times Square/Broadway/theater–whatever–that evening became imprinted as a silly, happy, children-in-New York memory, indelibly linked to Bernadette Peters.

Which is one reason that I recently went to see her in the revival of A Little Night Music. by Stephen Sondheim.

Frankly, there were several times in the production when I wished for a little less night music.  The actors were good, and though I admire the type of mind that can coherently rhyme “raisins” and “liasons,” good actors and cleverness alone can’t quite carry me through three hours.  There is just too much of everything in the play except for likeable, fleshed-out characters and/or an intriguing plot.

Except that there is also Ms. Peters.  Send In The Clowns, her big number, is not a favorite song, with all its potential for the hackneyed.   But her sensitivity, vulnerability, voice, timing, expressions, put one in touch with what is the best in performance–the sculpted but true moment–the poeticized real–something that is both wondrous and immediately recognizable; an empathy-inducing shimmer that, incredibly, is reproduced again and again, night after night.

I was so happy to see that my affection wasn’t all based on egg creams (with or without fries.)