Bernadette’s Broadway Fever

“I just thought I had died and gone to heaven,” recalled Bernadette Peters, recounting a childhood memory at Santa Barbara’s Granada Theatre. As a little girl, she explored her parents’ record collection one Sunday morning while they slept, selecting the album with the prettiest cover: Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel. As the “Carousel Waltz” began, she was enchanted.

Decades later, the redhead-and-ringlets Broadway legend brought that same magic – and a touch of “Fever” – to the Granada, courtesy of UCSB Arts & Lectures.

Beforehand, supporters gathered for wine and cheese at Art & Soul Gallery, serenaded by Spanish guitarist Tony Ybarra. Then Meghan Bush, Miller McCune executive director, welcomed newer supporters, explaining that A&L fosters more than performances. “This is where I met my people,” say many patrons of the program. Mingling were Dorothy Largay, Gamble Parks Douville, Niki Horwitch, sponsor Leslie Thomas with Richard Salzberg, and Producers Circle members John La Puma and Kandi Amelon.

Bush thanked lead sponsor Sara Miller McCune, whom she playfully crowned Santa Barbara’s “other queen,” along with Thomas.

Then Broadway royalty took the stage. Wearing a plunging gold gown with a daring slit, Peters stretched seductively across the top of the grand piano during “Fever.” She sang Rodgers & Hammerstein favorites from South Pacific, Carousel, and State Fair, plus Sondheim selections from Into the Woods and Follies, and “Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music. Introducing “No One Is Alone,” she recalled listening from the wings to Kim Crosby sing it each night in Into the Woods.

At 78, the inspirational Bernadette is still touring and taking on new acting roles. She’s filming the third season of Netflix’s A Man on the Inside with Ted Danson, playing Coco Van Beck, a “grand dame” of San Francisco society. Fitting.

She also appears in the upcoming film The Debut, directed by Jesse Eisenberg and starring Julianne Moore, and has concerts scheduled into 2027.

Her musicians included a Mickey Mouse Club “Mouseketeer” original, drummer Cubby O’Brien, Musical Director Tedd Firth on piano, and longtime bassist Kevin Axt.

That little girl fell in love with a record. Santa Barbara fell for the woman who grew up to sing its songs.