REQUIRED READING: Sondheim Baby - Bernadette Peters

Photo by Pari Dukovic, New York Magazine

This is required reading - New York Magazine's Jesse Green's feature on Bernadette Peters and Follies:

Follies is about the psychosis of nostalgia, but its pungency comes in part from making the past so damned attractive: a Peters specialty. Sondheim’s songs, too, play off period models but are better than the originals in almost every instance. Sally’s “Losing My Mind”—a pastiche of Gershwin’s “The Man I Love”—packs so much lyrical acuity into its moan of a melody that only a very brave actress will step fully onboard. Peters does. Singing it, she usually starts crying by the bridge. At the end, you think, This ­woman’s life is over.


Read more: Sondheim Baby - Bernadette Peters goes from boop-a-doop to dark.