Melinda's Board: San Francisco Chronicle Article

Date: 11/15/01 11:12:57 AM
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Subject: San Francisco Chronicle Article
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Bringing Broadway to S.F.

Leah Garchik Tuesday, November 13, 2001

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Saw this in the S.F. Chronicle thought maybe someone would want to read it.

Bernadette Peters, who opens at the Orpheum a week from today and will play there through Nov. 25, (but not Nov. 21 or Thanksgiving), arrived in San Francisco on Sunday to begin rehearsals. "We have guys in this show," she told TIC, the enthusiasm in her voice conveying a vivid image of an ivory-skinned coquette surrounded by handsome young men in tight pants.

"We have some of the stuff that I do, and some new stuff, too, some stuff that San Francisco has never seen. There's even a little surprise." Peters' forthcoming album is "Bernadette Peters Loves Rodgers and Hammerstein." It seems a safe bet that "You'll Never Walk Alone," which she sang last week on "Larry King Live," will be part of the mix.

Peters, who lives in New York, L.A. and Miami nowadays, grew up in Queens, across the river from the Great White Way on which she built her career. The longest she's ever been away from New York was when she was 13 and spent eight months touring with "Gypsy." So Sept. 11 was a particular shock to the hometown girl.

"The scary part is that you get angry and you think, wait a minute, wasn't it anger that caused all of this?" Her husband, who she says is in the financial business, was in his Pan Am Building office midtown when he "heard the first plane. It was going down Park Avenue. He saw the plane hit the building, and he called his friend (who worked at the World Trade Center) and said, 'Get out of there.' And then they saw the second plane hit."

Two weeks later, Peters was in the first wave of entertainers who joined forces to make public service announcements promoting Broadway. As to the specific effect of the event on her music, "in earlier concerts, I did sing 'America the Beautiful.' " Although the music is "so personal when you sing, and personal when people hear it . . . we all know that we're feeling the same thing," Peters said.

"You'll Never Walk Alone" has had particular meaning since Sept. 11 because it's a song that says "when it's the hardest, that's when you need to be brave. " But love songs seem particularly piercing, too, because "we have so many emotions right now. There are more emotions floating around, and they're closer to the surface."

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