For Peters, More Than a Night’s Work

Was there ever a more adorable performer than Bernadette Peters? Who else manages to combine sheer, svelte sensuality with cute-as-a-button good looks, an engaging voice and a sly, squeaky sense of humor?

All these qualities and more were onstage, front and center, Saturday night in an exquisite Peters performance at the season-opening concert of the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts.

Adorable though she may be, what was particularly fascinating about Peters’ performance was the depth of talent revealed. The first half of the program included a number of routines familiar to those who have seen her before: a pig Latin rendering of “We’re in the Money,” a buoyant romp through the audience, a sexy use of the piano as a chaise longue.

Despite the familiarity, she did it all very well, singing an attractive selection of tunes beautifully, adding a dance step here and there, constantly crossing the stage to reach all of the capacity audience, and tossing in bits and pieces of whimsical humor that were immensely heightened by her superb comic timing.

For some artists, that would have been good enough for a full night’s performance. But Peters had other ideas. During intermission, she traded the fire-engine red gown of the first half for an elegant black outfit, with music director Marvin Laird now garbed in full dress black tails.

The change underscored the more serious nature of the balance of the program, which was devoted to Stephen Sondheim songs. Peters, of course, has a considerable history with Sondheim (although she now is scheduled to return to Broadway in a revival of Irving Berlin’s “Annie Get Your Gun”). And she did not hesitate to choose some of the composer’s most demanding material, from the rollicking “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” to the thoughtful “Children Will Listen” and the passionate “Being Alive.”

The songs--with their sudden twists of melody, complex rhyming and sophisticated themes--activated the full extent of Peters’ skills. Still adorable, still sensual and engaging, she now was mature and insistent as well, reaching out to her audience with interpretations that moved beyond the pleasantries of pop into the multilayered intricacies of art song. The result was a rare example of an artist refusing to talk down to her listeners, instead offering them the opportunity to experience some of the finest (if, sadly, more obscure than it should be) music of recent decades.

Peters closed, as she has in the past, with a lovely rendering of “I’ll Be Seeing You.” If Saturday night’s program was any indication of what audiences can expect from future appearances, one can only hope that we will again be seeing Peters very soon.