When Bernadette Peters, the Tony-winning Oakley, reached the roped-off press corps, they were having a frenetic field-day with the eminently obliging Susan Lucci, who once spelled Peters for a spell during the last long-run of Annie Get Your Gun. Rather than sprout fangs, the two embraced like Old Home Week, doubling their pleasure as well as the photogs'. It was blinding embrace, and both luscious-looking ladies (Peters with her cascading curls, Lucci in bordello red) took to the warm limelight as if to the manor born.

"We're here for John," Lucci offered by way of explanation, meaning John McDaniel, who had shepherded her gingerly through the Oakley role and was now the main driving force behind Brooklyn: The Musical. Peters knew only too well of McDaniel's many hats on this particular project: "He wrote some of the arrangements for the score [by Broadway-debuting Mark Schoenfeld and Barri McPherson], and he's producing this time as well." Plus orchestrating and musically supervising, according to his Playbill bio.

McDaniel, surprised and delighted by the overage of Oakleys, stepped forth to squeeze the two stars and take his boy-in-the-middle place for even more pictures. Both ladies said they longed for Broadway, but, lacking that, Peters would take the rest of the year off before getting into concert gear again, and Lucci would get back to more Emmy-losing.

An inordinate amount of Annie Get Your Gun alums showed up in support of McDaniel and director-co-producer Jeff Calhoun—including producers Barry and Fran Weissler (clucking contentedly over the raves Brooke Shields won for their Wonderful Town) and director Graciela Daniele (readying the choreography for Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens' next, Dessa Rose, which will world-premiere March 21 at the Mitzi Newhouse).

Lucci's sell wasn't lessened any by the long shlep across town for the post premiere party at the posh Gustavinos restaurant on the Upper East Side. "Wasn't it magical?" she trilled to Cindy Adams when she swooped down at the table of the Post columnist and took a seat. I didn't quite catch Cindy's response to that leading question, but their little tete was derailed at length by Cindy's cellphone. (Come to think of it, she could have been phoning it in direct, not messing with Rewrite, like Hedda Hopper in Sunset Boulevard.)

The most sartorially schizophrenic pair at the party was the newly formed team of Ben Vereen and Hinton Battle. The former was elegance personified—pink scarf, black-on-black duds and a stylish fedora—and Battle, who has two Tonys more than Vereen, made do by dressing down, affecting a West Coast Choppers baseball cap, even.

The room was abuzz with their next project—as much as it could be since the two were terribly tight-lipped about particulars. "We're not disclosing the name yet," Battle said, but he did say it was for Broadway—and Ben—this season. He [Battle] would direct and choreograph. "After that," he added, "we're going to do a show together as performers."

They just finished an HBO movie, My Life in Idlewild, Vereen performing and Battle choreographing. (That's the film that forced Battle out of Broadway's current Dracula.)

There was a lot of dressing-down at Brooklyn's bash. Producer Benjamin Mordecai, sporting an old-fashioned Brooklyn baseball jacket, has—in his Noah-like fashion—two Broadway shows going at the same time: Brooklyn and the August Wilson Gem of the Ocean, opening Nov. 11 at the Walter Kerr. "Tell me about it!" Mordecai moaned. He admitted he could use a little more time between shows but still expects to be aboard for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, "not in a lead as I usually am, but just supporting Marty Bell."

McDaniel adopted a grunge look, via some "cool new designers, Libertine," in which his black tux tapered off into ragged white tatters from elbow to sleeve. When he applauded on opening night, which he did profusely, it looked like a fire-and-light show in his lap. It was his first night on Broadway, and it was obvious he was enjoying the hell out of it. After all, as he reasoned later at the party, "You'll never have your first show again."

Yes, he allowed, he had his moments of push-pull. "Sometimes the musician in me would want extra musicians, and the producer in me would say, `No! they're too expensive.' So I'd have this late-night tussle with myself. `My daughter. My sister. My daughter. My sister. My daughter.' But it was a wonderful ride. I was really taken with the score and the method of storytelling. I'd never seen anything like this before. I thought it very unique." Continued...