A New Tune for Bernadette Peters
By Dick Donahue, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 5/8/2008
One of the musical theater’s most celebrated stars has been carrying on a love affair—an affair that’s now out in the open. Yes, Bernadette Peters, whose stage credits read like a Baedeker’s guide to the stage (Sunday in the Park with George, Gypsy, Mack & Mabel, Into the Woods, Annie Get Your Gun), has gone to the dogs. In addition to being mom to two dogs—Stella (a nine-year-old pit bull that Peters unabashedly calls “the love of my life”) and Kramer (whom she calls her “Heinz 57 Varieties” pooch)—the actress launched an adopt-a-pet charity 10 years ago. And now she’s written a picture book, Broadway Barks (Blue Apple, June), which is also the name of Peters’ charity.
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Bernadette Peters. |
How did Broadway Barks come about? “I had just finished Annie Get Your Gun, and we had raised a lot of money for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS,” Peters recalls. “We said, ‘Well, let’s do something for the animals.’ ” Peters enlisted the aid of her friend Mary Tyler Moore, her Annie stage manager, Richard Hester, and Broadway Cares executive director Tom Viola.
The various city animal shelters banded together and staged the first “show” in the summer of 1999 in Broadway’s iconic Shubert Alley. It was—and still is—held late on a Saturday afternoon, so that Broadway performers can doff their costumes, grab a pooch and parade him or her around a small stage, extolling the doggie’s merit in fine theatrical fashion. (Last year, for the first time, cats were offered for adoption.) Peters proudly notes that there were 130 animals at the 2007 Barks, of which 100 were adopted. Last year’s lineup of Broadway performers included Tony Award-winner David Hyde Pierce of Curtains, his co-star Debra Monk, Angela Lansbury, Jo Anne Worley and three of the original Jersey Boys stars. This year’s event takes place on July 12.
But wait, there’s more: a picture book, namely. Through a mutual friend Peters met Harriet Ziefert, currently the publisher of Blue Apple Books in Maplewood, N.J. (As Peters puts it, “It’s just weird how all these things have come together.”) When Ziefert asked Peters if she’d be interested in turning the Broadway Barks story into a picture book, the star hesitated only briefly before exclaiming, “Ooooo, yeah!”
Broadway Barks, which is illustrated by Liz Murphy, tells of a scruffy mutt named Douglas who lives in the park, “waiting to be found.” One day he follows a pretty lady (who bears a striking resemblance to Peters) to Shubert Alley, where “there will be a show” at which someone just might take Douglas home. Just when it looks as though his chances for adoption have passed him by, a girl appears and offers to take him home. In the finale, the girl says, “You look like a Kramer to me.” Curtain.
Ziefert thought the book “really should have a song.” Peters, however, wasn’t about to write it, saying, “I have too much respect for composers.” But one day on a plane ride, a tune came into her head. Fearful that she wouldn’t remember it, she sang it first to her seatmate, her assistant, Patty Saccente, and later into a tape recorder once she was home. So now a CD entitled “Kramer’s Song, written and sung by Bernadette Peters,” is tucked into the back flap of the picture book that started as an animal charity, all because a Broadway star “wanted to bring to people’s attention how wonderful the animals in shelters are, and how healing animals are in our life.”
We couldn’t help but wonder: might Broadway Barks, the book, one day become Broadway Barks, the musical? Right on cue, Ms. Peters gave her response: “Woof.”
Broadway Barks by Bernadette Peters, illus. by Liz Murphy. Blue Apple Books, $17.95 (40p) ages 4-8 ISBN 978-1-934706-00-8
