TV REVIEW : Bernstein Tribute Kicks Off ‘Pops’ 22nd Season

Almost without cliches, “Bernstein’s Broadway” opens the 22nd season of “Evening at Pops,” the Boston Pops Orchestra’s television series (Sunday at 8 p.m. on KCET Channel 28 and KPBS Channel 15), with a clever melange of Leonard Bernstein’s tunes and snippets.

Of course, any show that ends, as this one does, with a “West Side Story” medley, will irritate connoisseurs as well as those who would prefer to encounter less-familiar Bernsteiniana.

Still, this particular bunch of excerpts is brief and well performed by a mini-company composed of soprano June Anderson, actress-singer Beatrice Arthur (who narrates the hourlong show) and Broadway veterans Debbie Shapiro, George Dvorsky, Jason Graae and Howard McGillin. It hurts not at all.

Musical-theatrical pleasures characterize the rest of these 60 minutes; choreographer Susan Stroman staged the entire show.

Anderson dominates, as a genuine prima donna ought to do, of course. She begins, after the “Candide” Overture, with Cunegonde’s aria, “Glitter and Be Gay,” complete with solid and brilliant high notes and seductive singing within and below the staff. She ends, accompanied by colleagues and the orchestra, with an affecting but never maudlin “Somewhere” from you-know-what.

In between, she sings the “Ohio” duet from “Wonderful Town” with Arthur, and the two women join their four friends in the conga from the same show. Shapiro, Dvorsky, Graae and McGillin make theatrically profitable solo appearances in “On the Town” and “Wonderful Town” excerpts, and the orchestra plays the “West Side Story” mambo. If it tends to sound over-brassy much of the time, at least here that is appropriate.

John Williams conducts the Pops and the entire program with that assurance and expertise only years of experience can accumulate. He is so strong, one tends not to notice him.

The 11-program series (five new shows and six reruns) continues July 14, when the guest soloists are Patti Austin and James Ingram.