Song of Bernadette

As you will already be aware, dear reader, Madam Arcati and I are avid arch-Sondheimites, and we whoop with joy at any opportunity to see his musical numbers sung by a stage legend. Just last November we went to see the one-night-only "An Evening With..." "Broadway Royalty" Mandy Patinkin, the originator of the part of "George" in Sondheim's Sunday In the Park With George - and this Monday we were privileged to get tickets for a similar format show starring his co-star, the original "Dot/Marie", Miss Bernadette Peters!

This may have been our third theatrical experience in a fortnight [starting with Hello Dolly!], and our second in one weekend - but what a sublime evening it was...

From Musical Theatre Review:

For her fans, this was a near-religious experience. The pre-show lobby was filled with feverish excitement and once the performance began inside the auditorium, volume levels assumed a binary deafening applause or silent awe. However, with the sense of humour and charm that has made her a star, Peters punctured any potential pretentiousness and delivered a stunning show that demands to be remembered.

She is a remarkable talent indeed - even at 76 years old, she looked amazing in her glitzy gown and trademark curly red hair.

Her show wasn't all Sondheim, of course - her brilliant transformation of the usually testosterone-heavy There Is Nothing Like a Dame from Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific into a solo "seductress" number was a stroke of genius, and when she reclined over the grand piano to sing Peggy Lee's Fever, she gave Michelle Pfeiffer a run for her money!

Giving a nod to Imelda Staunton up the road, she also did cracking renditions of Jerry Herman's Before the Parade Passes By and So Long Dearie.

It was to "The Maestro", however - to whom she owes so much - that she mainly paid tribute. Despite the occasional wobble and crack in her voice, she nonetheless gave his big numbers such as Losing My Mind, Children Will Listen, Send In the Clowns, No One Is Alone and - in a standout performance that nearly brought the house down with applause - Being Alive the full-on performance they deserve.

Bernadette Peters - Being Alive

Perhaps the most memorable number of the lot, though, was when none other than Bonnie Langford and fellow West End trouper Joanna Riding [with whom Miss Peters had recently starred in the Sondheim revue Old Friends] joined her for a briliant rendition of You Gotta Get a Gimmick. We roared!

What an evening! What show! I doubt we'll ever see the like of Bernadette Peters again...

With one look I play every part

Dismissing the fact that just about everyone seems fascinated how a woman of 81 can do what she does - cut a whole new studio album including some challenging modern styles, and then go on a tour up and down the country to promote it - our Patron Saint Petula Clark (shamefully not yet a Dame) recently said:

"I don't think about my age and I don't care about anyone else's.

"It's about doing what you do well and about learning and progressing. I'm still learning. I don't ever think I know how to do this."

Nevertheless, to still be at the top of your game at the time of life when many people would prefer settling into a comfy armchair with a cup of tea and a copy of the People's Friend is a remarkable feat, indeed. And so it was as Madame Arcati, John-John and I (almost killing ourselves scaling the stairs to the Upper Circle) settled breathlessly into our seats in the packed Theatre Royal Drury Lane for the penultimate date on her month-long UK tour.

We sat, transfixed, as the great lady (accompanied by a small but accomplished band of fine musicians) glittered her way to the centre of that vast grandiose auditorium, and filled the whole place with the beauty and power of her voice. She certainly has lost little of her vocal dexterity, and admirably still has the stamina to tackle a wide-ranging selection of (often musically complex) numbers from her seven-decade career in a full two-hour show.

Everything we love Our Pet for was here, and more. From her early pop hits (Sailor, I Know a Place), through the Tony Hatch Songbook (I Couldn't Live Without Your Love, Colour My World, The Other Man's Grass Is Always Greener, Don't Sleep in the Subway) and her ballad from Finnigan's Rainbow (How Are Things in Glockamora?) right up to her newest material including covers of Gnarls Barkley's Crazy, Elvis's Love Me Tender and her mate John Lennon's Imagine, we couldn't fault her.

In between songs, she gave us some snippets of fascinating gossip such as the time when the young Pet and none other than Karen Carpenter found themselves in Elvis Presley's dressing-room, but apparently she made excuses and the two girls left before "Old Snakehips" could have his wicked way; and her odd experience of working with Fred Astaire and Francis Ford Coppola together in the height of the hippy trippy 60s. But throughout all these showbiz moments (she was entertaining the troops on Forces Radio at the age of eight, and she was there for Lennon and Ono's "bed-in for peace" and sang on Give Peace A Chance), it is the music that really makes her stand out. She is not for nothing one of the best selling British female artists in recording history, selling over 68 million records worldwide.

She did a magnificent version of her triumphal showstopper as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard:

Petula Clark - With One Look

We were treated to a most emotionally beautiful rendition of the song none other than Charlie Chaplin gifted to her:

Petula Clark - Love, This Is My Song (C'est ma chanson)

Proving she can more than hold her own against the monstrous wave of modern-day "wibblers" and wannabees, she hushed the audience with her brilliant 2013 single:

Petula Clark - Cut Copy Me - Compuphonic Remix (Instamatic Video)

But of course it was for her all-time classic Downtown that the cheers were inevitably the loudest:

Petula Clark - Downtown

In a year of seeing long-revered icons make major comebacks (Bowie) or appear on stage (Marianne Faithfull, Bryan Ferry), this particular Evening With Petula Clark made us really sit up and take notice - an evening we will certainly cherish for a long time!

We love Our Pet.

Petula Sally Olwen Clark, CBE (born 15th November 1932)