Westport Playhouse to Celebrate Bernadette Peters; Into the Woods Will Launch Season

By Adam Hetrick
18 Jul 2011

Bernadette Peters
Bernadette Peters
Photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN

The Westport Country Playhouse will honor two-time Tony Award winner Bernadette Peters during its 80th birthday gala, which will take place Sept. 19.

Peters, who returns to Broadway next month as Sally Durant Plummer in the Stephen Sondheim-James Goldman musical Follies, will be celebrated during the Playing Our Songs: Celebrating 80 Years of Musical Theater concert at Westport.

The concert will celebrate the musicals produced at Westport since the theatre opened its doors in 1931. Performers will be announced at a later date.

The Connecticut institution also announced that it will open its season with the Sondheim-James Lapine musical Into the Woods, in which Peters starred on Broadway. Artistic director Mark Lamos will direct the production, which is co-presented with Baltimore's Center Stage, where it will run in March 2012. Complete details of the 2011-2012 season at Westport will be announced shortly.

"Bernadette Peters is not only a force of nature and a Broadway musical star of legendary significance, she is also a true artist: boldly exploratory, constantly refining her enormous talent, always challenging herself, never sitting on her laurels," Lamos said in a statement. "Whatever she does, watching her is akin to watching the great classical musicians who constantly stretch themselves and excite audiences not only with sheer charisma – which she has in spades, to be sure – but with a sense of refinement and that is unparalleled in American musical theater. She goes for the truth of a song with the force of a heat-seeking missile."

Peters appeared at Westport Country Playhouse in Riverwind in 1967. She was last seen on Broadway in the revival of A Little Night Music and received Tony Awards for her work in Song and Dance and Annie Get Your Gun. He numerous stage appearances also include George M!, Dames at Sea, On the Town, Mack and Mabel, Sunday in the Park With George, The Goodbye Girl and Gypsy. Her films include "The Jerk," "Annie" and her Golden Globe Award-winning performance in "Pennies from Heaven."

Benefit tickets, beginning at $500, are available by phoning (203) 227-5137, ext. 122 or e-mailing kgloor@westportplayhouse.org.

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