Bernadette Peters Born For The Spotlight

Watching Bernadette Peters singing “Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)” reclined atop a grand piano—head tossed back, hair wildly enmeshed—she looks as though Botticelli painted her.Ms. Peters, who is equally at home as a fairy-tale icon singing the melody “No One is Alone,” from Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods,” also radiates a maternal comfort that is beyond imagination. Transfixing, she is—and most certainly will be on Saturday at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center, where she will sing songs of her choosing.

To Broadway fans, Ms. Peters is recognizably something of a kewpie doll—a tiny 5 feet 2 inches with a Raggedy Ann innocence and wild red locks. It’s a persona that draws on comedy for its essence.

“I think I have a really, really good sense of humor,” Ms. Peters said on Sunday during a telephone interview from her home in Manhattan. “Did you ever meet a person who didn’t have a sense of humor? It’s so bizarre. It’s like there’s a gene missing. So, I do. I do have a sense of humor. … I grew up watching the movies from the ’20s, ’30s and the ’40s, so I have a sense of that kind of style.”

She was born in Queens, as Bernadette Lazzara, to her father, Peter, who drove a bread delivery truck, and her mother, Marguerite, who put her daughter in show business at the tender age of 3 on the television series “Juvenile Jury.” By age 9, she had earned her Actors Equity Card as Bernadette Peters—taken from her father’s first name—to avoid ethnic stereotyping.

More than 40 years ago, Ms. Peters got her big Broadway break in the satirical musical “Dames at Sea,” an homage to the gaudy musicals of the 1930s. She went on to appear in the festive comedy “On The Town,” for which she received her first Tony nomination.

As is her wont, Ms. Peters—widely acknowledged as the premier interpreter of Sondheim—traditionally devotes the second half of her concerts to songs he’s written. “Well, I am a lyrics person,” she piped up in her trademark high-pitched voice, by way of explanation. “I love what words say. What’s so good about his music is that he writes the music and the lyrics. So he really says what he wants to say, exactly how he wants to say it.”

For instance, she continues, “If the character is angry, he writes a quarter note for a reason, then he writes a whole note for the passion—and it’s all right there. But, also, what he writes about … like ‘children will listen,’ ‘there’s so little to be sure of,’ ‘no one is alone,’” she quoted from “Into the Woods.” “I think they’re sort of healing type things to hear—and uplifting.”

In concert, Ms. Peters is, beyond all else, one who is most at home on the stage. That is where her life began and where she has lived ever since.

Her commitment to her work, to discovering herself in every role is a distinction she carries. Among those—which include Marie in “Sunday in the Park with George,” Desiree in “A Little Night Music,” and Sally in “Follies,” all musicals by Sondheim—one she holds dear is Mama Rose in “Gypsy.”

“Not that I have children,” she pointed out, “but I was a child in show business, and I had a sister and a mother. So it was interesting to look at it from the whole family’s point of view. It was like the best therapy I ever did. It was a great role.”

For her portrayal of Mama Rose in the 2003 revival of “Gypsy,” Ms Peters received her seventh Tony nomination. She’s won two for Best Actress in a Musical—the first as Emma in Andrew Lloyd Weber’s “Song and Dance” in 1986, and the second, 13 years later, as Annie Oakley in Irving Berlin’s “Annie Get Your Gun.”

In addition, she garnered a special Tony in 2012 for Humanitarian Achievements for her charity, Broadway Barks.

“Wanna hear a dog story?” Ms. Peters inquires eagerly, without waiting for a reply. She loves talking about her two dogs, Rosalia and Charlie, both adopted from shelters.

Charlie, who was found in the garbage, had many fears, especially of people in uniforms. “So I would take him out walking and take him into every store,” she said. “He went to Sephora and MAC, and he went to Barney’s. And he loved the women.”

Beyond her contributions to shelter animals, Ms. Peters writes children’s books drawn from her experiences with her pets. Her latest, “Stella and Charlie, Friends Forever,” explores their sibling rivalry—which resolves itself when Stella, having been stung by a bee, gets a kiss on her nose from Charlie.

“And then he brought her one of his toys, so she realized it’s a very good thing to have a companion,” she said.

While Ms. Peters offers a window into her personal life, it quickly becomes clear it is curtailed by an all consuming career. “I’m in the middle of taping a series that’s on Amazon called ‘Mozart in the Jungle,’” she explained. “So I’m just doing [my concerts] on the weekends. Then I go back to the series, then another city.”

With more than 100 stage and screen credits, 67-year-old Ms. Peters said she is far from retirement. “I love singing. I hope I’ll always sing,” she said with glowing optimism.

And when asked how she would like future generations to see her, she added simply, “As a truthful actress—and they must do it the same way. They must be truthful and they must be original. Original, meaning, don’t copy me. Don’t copy anyone. Have it come out of you … the way you see life.”

Bernadette Peters will perform on Saturday, September 5, at 8 p.m. at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center. Tickets are $150. For more information, call (631) 288-1500, or visit whbpac.org.