Bernadette Peters Recalls the Moment She Fell in Love With Stephen Sondheim’s Work: ‘He’s Our Shakespeare’
variety.comGordon Cox Theater Editor The Tony-winning Broadway icon Bernadette Peters has long been considered one of the foremost performers of composer Stephen Sondheim‘s work.
But as Peters revealed in the latest episode of “Stagecraft,” Variety‘s theater podcast, it wasn’t quite love at first sight when she initially performed his tunes.
It was more like love at second sight. Listen to this week’s “Stagecraft” podcast below: In a “Stagecraft” episode recorded in front of a live audience on the Broadway Cruise, Peters recalled her earliest rehearsals for her first collaboration with Sondheim in “Sunday in the Park With George.” (Still to come: “Into the Woods,” “Follies,” “A Little Night Music” and more.) The first number they rehearsed was the complicated and challenging opening number: “I had to feel my way through,” she remembered. “A lot of breath control, a lot of words, a lot to remember.
That made me very nervous.” “But then,” she continued, “the second number we worked on was ‘Color and Light,’ where [co-star] Mandy Patinkin was painting and I was powdering, and I just fell in love with the show when we were rehearsing that song.
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