One enchanted evening
If Bernadette Peters didn't find a buyer for her vacation home in the crowd at Symphony Hall on Saturday night it was not due to lack of persuasiveness.
In a running joke during her splendid performance, the Broadway babe dropped nuggets about the private getaway - five bedrooms, a pool - she's trying to unload in the struggling real estate market. "It's awful cold in Boston. My house is in Florida," she quipped.
Buying second homes might not be on the docket for most people, but for 80 minutes on Saturday night Peters, backed note-perfectly by the Boston Musica Viva orchestra and her own deft musical director-pianist Marvin Laird, offered a glorious mental vacation with a show that was touching, funny, emotionally cathartic, and technically impressive.
Knowing that the star of such shows as "Gypsy" and "Into the Woods" is 61 did nothing to make you believe it when Peters took the stage resplendent in a shimmery, form-fitting, champagne gown, her trademark curls bouncing. When she opened her mouth to sing - starting with a playful take of "Let Me Entertain You" - it was even more difficult to process. Everything about her rightfully revered vocal stylings - from stamina to breath control to the power of her creamy tone - remains intact. She was equally strong on the piercing highs of "Some Enchanted Evening" to the comic lows of "There Is Nothin' Like a Dame," to the sultry middle ground on a slinky, piano-top prowling take on "Fever."
The meticulously calibrated tunes of favored composer Stephen Sondheim took up a good chunk of the show and Peters twisted and tumbled through them like a gold medal gymnast. But the expert navigations of hairpin vocal twists paled beside her ability to traverse the emotional map as an interpreter. "You Could Drive a Person Crazy" from "Company" was all insouciance and bitters while the keening "Johanna" from "Sweeney Todd" overflowed with a palpable wistfulness and "Being Alive" practically burst with restless desire.
At the top of the show Peters sang that she wanted to make the spirits of the near-capacity crowd climb and she more than made good on that offer. 